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PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


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miva  ^\^  J.  J- u  J.^t*  J-  /   J.  J. '-'Jii 

BR  145.2  .E3  1887 

Egar,  John  Hodson,  1832- 

1924. 
Christendom;  ecclesiastical 


THE  BISHOP  PADDOiK  LEC  TURKS   FOR   1887. 


CHRISTENDOM: 

ECCLESIASTICAL  AND  POLITICAL,  FROM 
CONSTANTINE  TO  THE  REFORMATION 


By  JOHN   HODSON   EGAR,   S.T.D., 

Rector  of  Zion  Church,  Rome,  N.  Y. 

Sometime   Professor  of  Ecclesiastical   History  in    Nashotah 

Theological   Seminary. 


NEW   YORK  : 

JAMES  POTT  &  CO.,  Publishers. 

1887. 


Copyright,  1887, 
Bv  JAMES  POTT  &  CO. 


Tress  of  A.  C.  Sherwood  &  Co., 
47  Lafayetle  Place,  New  York. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE. 

I.  Byzantinism,             ......               3 

II.  The  Roman  Reaction,                ....                    61 

III.  The  Conversion  of  the  Franks,        ....  121 

IV.  The  New  Imperialism,  .             .             .             .                  175 
V.  Papalism,                 .             ,             .            .             .             .227 

VI.  Nationalism,      .             .            .            .             .             .                291 


PREFACE. 


For  some  years  it  was  my  duty  and  privilege,  as 
Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History  at  Nashotah,  to  di- 
rect the  studies  in  that  department  of  the  young  men 
preparing  there  for  the  Ministry  of  the  Church.  I  then 
found  it  both  necessary  and  profitable  to  trace  for  them, 
as  well  as  I  was  able,  the  connection  between  the  Ec- 
clesiastical and  the  Political  History  of  the  different 
periods  that  came  under  review.  The  interest  manifested 
in  these  explanations  suggested  to  me  that  a  course  of 
lectures  on  this  subject  might  be  useful  to  such  of  the 
intelligent  laity  as  are  desirous  to  inform  themselves 
about  the  past  history  of  the  Church  ;  and  the  design 
of  writing  such  a  course,  when  I  should  have  opportu- 
nity to  set  about  it,  gradually  grew  in  my  mind. 

Other  duties,  however,  prevented  any  serious  attempt 
to  realize  this  intention,  until  last  year  I  received  the 
honor  of  being  appointed  the  Bishop  Paddock  Lecturer 
for  1887.  On  being  notified  of  the  appointment,  it 
seemed  to  me  that  I  could  best  fulfil  it  by  giving  my 
lectures  this  direction;  and,  having  consulted  the  Dean 
of  the  General  Theological  Seminary,  and  received  his 
opinion  that  such  a  course  would  be  within  the  inten- 
tion of  the  Foundation,  this  book  is  the  result.  I  had 
not  the  presumption  to  think  (and  I  told  my  hearers 
so,  in  the  few  words  with  which  I  prefaced  the  first 
lecture,)  that  I  could  add  anything  to  the  instruction 
which  the  students  of  the  General  Theological  Seminary 


vi  Preface. 

receive  from  their  learned  professors  ;  but  I  hoped  that 
what  I  wrote  might  be  useful  to  some  who  have  not 
their  advantages,  if  it  should  prove  readable  when  in 
print. 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  explanation  that  the  opinions 
expressed  in  these  lectures  have  not  been  hastily  con- 
ceived, or  set  forth  without  consideration. 

It  has  not  been  thought  necessary  to  give  references 
for  facts  which  are  the  common  matter  of  Ecclesiastical 
or  Secular  History.  The  few  that  are  given  upon  par- 
ticular points  are  to  such  books  as  I  was  able  to  consult 
while  writing  in  my  own  study. 

Rome,  N.  Y., 
jFeast  of  x^t  Sransfiguration, 

1887. 


THE  BISHOP  PADDOCK  LECTURES. 


In  the  summer  of  the  year  1880,  George  A.  Jarvis, 
of  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  moved  by  his  sense  of  the  great 
good  which  might  thereby  accrue  to  the  cause  of  Christ 
and  to  the  Church,  of  which  he  was  an  ever  grateful 
member,  gave  to  the  General  Theological  Seminary  of 
the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  certain  securities 
exceeding  in  value  eleven  thousand  dollars  for  the  foun- 
dation and  maintenance  of  a  Lectureship  in  said 
Seminary.  Out  of  love  to  a  former  pastor  and  enduring 
friend,  the  Rt.  Rev.  Benjamin  Henry  Paddock,  D.D., 
Bishop  of  Massachusetts,  he  named  his  Foundation 
"The  Bishop  Paddock  Lectureship." 

The  deed  of  trust  declares  that  : 

"The  subjects  of  the  Lectures  shall  be  such  as  apper- 
tain to  the  defence  of  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ,  as 
revealed  in  the  Holy  Bible  and  illustrated  in  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer  against  the  varying  errors  of  the  day, 
whether  materialistic,  rationalistic,  or  professedly  relig- 
ious, and  also  to  its  defence  and  confirmation  in  respect 
of  such  central  truths  as  the  Trinity,  the  Atonement , 
Justification,  and  the  Inspiration  of  the  Word  of  God, 
and  of  such  central  facts  as  the  Churches  Divine  Order 
and  Sacraments,  her  historical  Reformation  and  her 
rights  and  powers  as  a  pure  and  National  Church.  And 
other  subjects  may  be  chosen  if  unanimously  approved 
by  the  Board  of  Appointment  as  beingboth  timely  and 
also  within  the  true  intent  of  this  Lectureship." 


iv  The  Bishop  Paddock  Lectures. 

Under  the  appointment  of  the  Board  created  by  the 
Trust,  viz.,  the  Dean  of  the  General  Theological  Semi- 
nary, and  the  Bishops  respectively  of  Massachusetts, 
Connecticut  and  Long  Island,  the  Rev.  John  H.  Egar, 
D.D.,  Rector  of  Zion  Church,  Rome,  N.  Y.,  delivered 
the  Lectures  for  the  year  1887,  contained  in  this  volume. 
They  may  be  considered  as  bearing  upon  the  Church's 
"  historical  Reformation,  and  her  rights  and  powers  as 
a  pure  and  National  Church." 


I. 

BYZANTINISM. 


I. 

BYZANTINISM. 


At  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  century,  the  Church 
of  Christ  had  extended  itself  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  had  carried  its  mis- 
sions into  countries  beyond  its  bounds.  It  had  passed 
safely  through  all  but  the  last  of  the  great  persecutions 
by  which  the  heathen  emperors  had  sought  to  put  it 
down.  It  had  successfully  resisted  the  attempts  of  the 
Oriental  gnosis,  and  of  Greek  philosophy  to  adulterate 
the  faith  in  Christ  ;  and  it  had  infused  with  that  faith, 
into  the  hearts  of  multitudes  of  every  class  and  condi- 
tion the  love  of  God  and  of  the  brethren,  and  the  hope 
of  eternal  life.  It  had  fixed  the  brand  of  the  Divine 
displeasure  upon  sin  and  wickedness,  and  established 
the  tradition  and  habit  of  good  morals  and  personal 
purity  through  the  example  of  several  generations  of 
its  members  ;  and  it  was  constantly  widening  its  in- 
fluence by  the  conversion  of  those  outside  and  their 
incorporation  into  its  body.  It  was  an  extensive  and 
pov/erful  organization,  whose  strength  lay  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  Divine  mission  and  Divine  help,  in  the 
possession  of  a  certain  faith  and  a  fixed  rule  of  life,  in 


4        Christendom  Ecclesiastical  arid  Political 

the  zeal  and  devotion  of  its  clergy,  and  the  loyal  and 
free  adhesion  of  its  laity.  The  arts  it  used  to  extend 
its  influence  were  such  as  convinced  the  mind  and  ap- 
pealed to  the  heart  ;  and  the  methods  it  employed  to 
keep  it  were  such  as  trained  its  members  to  "  hold  the 
faith  in  unity  of  spirit,  in  the  bond  of  peace  and  in 
righteousness  of  life." 

At  the  time  lam  speaking  of,  the  primitive  polity 
had  developed  and  fixed  itself  so  that  there  is  no  diffi- 
culty in  tracing  the  means  by  which  every  member  of 
the  vast  company  of  the  faithful  was  in  active  and  actual 
communion  with  every  other  member.  I  do  not  need, 
for  the  purpose  of  these  lectures  to  recapitulate,  how- 
ever briefly,  the  facts  which  are  accessible,  in  the  nu- 
merous histories  of  the  primitive  Church,  to  every  one 
who  cares  to  read.  In  ancient  liturgies  still  extant  we 
have  sufficient  evidence  to  show  what  was  the  common 
worship  ;  and  in  the  ancient  canons,  the  decrees  of 
Councils,  and  the  writings  of  the  fathers,  we  are  certified 
of  the  faith,  the  discipline  and  the  government  of  the 
Church.  The  baptized  member,  in  whatever  place,  if 
sound  in  faith  and  correct  in  life,  was  in  communion 
with  the  ascended  Head  of  the  Church  through  frequent 
Eucharists,  and  with  his  brethren  everywhere  through- 
out the  world,  through  the  Bishops  of  the  Apostolic 
Succession.  In  every  local  church  there  were  the  three 
orders  of  bishop,  presbyters  and  deacons,  and  under 
them  a  body  of  minor  officers,  through  whom  the  cler- 
ical influence  reached  all  ranks  and  classes  ;  there  was 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.  5 

a  chosen  band  of  devoted  and  perhaps  ascetic  individ- 
uals ;  and  there  was  a  laity  who  followed  the  Gospel  of 
Christ  in  the  midst  of  a  world  demonstrably  and  visibly 
lying  in  wickedness.  With  some  variety  in  detail,  the 
bishops  and  churches  of  each  province  or  nation  were 
united,  for  the  government  of  the  provincial  or  national 
Church,  under  one  of  their  number  as  metropolitan  or 
chief,  with  whom  they  met  in  council  from  time  to  time, 
as  the  canons  prescribed,  or  the  exigencies  of  the  Church 
demanded.  The  provincial  churches  were  in  commun- 
ion with  one  another  by  frequent  messengers  bearing 
official  letters,  as  well  as  by  the  presence  of  communi- 
cants or  clergy  properly  certified,  whose  affairs  led  them 
from  one  place  to  another.  As  individual  schismatics 
or  heretics,  or  immoral  persons  were  cut  off  from  the 
unity  of  the  Church  by  exclusion  from  the  sacraments 
until  their  penance  proved  their  repentance,  so  com- 
munities which  were  infected  with  schism  or  heresy  were 
refused  the  customary  letters,  and  were  held  to  be  out 
of  the  communion  of  the  Catholic  body  as  long  as  these 
were  denied.  And  thus,  in  the  absence  of  General 
Councils,  or  of  the  other  expedients  of  later  days,  the 
ante-Nicene  polity  was  amply  sufficient  to  secure  the 
external  unity  of  the  Church  at  large,  as  well  as  the 
edification  of  the  individual  member. 

So  powerful  a  body  as  the  Catholic  Church  of  the 
fourth  century,  animated  with  such  an  inward  spirit, 
and  held  together  in  such  a  comprehensive  and  effective 
organization,  disciplined  by  adversity,  and  welded  to- 


6        Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

gether  by  persecution,  so  strong  in  temper,  and  so  vast 
in  extent,  could  not  fail,  sooner  or  later,  to  impress  the 
head  of  the  Roman  Empire,  either  with  a  claim  upon  his 
allegiance,  or  with  a  desire  for  its  alliance.  But  when 
the  time  came,  whether  the  Emperor  gave  his  sincere 
adhesion  to  Christianity,  or  only  courted  its  political 
alliance,  it  was  not  in  the  nature  of  things  that  the 
condition  of  the  Church  should  be  what  it  had  been,  or 
that  some  modification  of  its  organization  and  methods 
should  not  ensue.  The  conversion  of  Constantine, 
whether  it  were  genuine  or  superficial,  was  an  event  of 
no  common  magnitude,  and  contains  within  itself  the 
germ  of  much  of  the  Church's  history  for  the  past  fifteen 
hundred  years.  It  was  the  beginning  of  the  union  of 
Church  and  State — it  could  not  be  otherwise — and  the 
action  and  reaction  of  these  great  powers  one  upon  the 
other,  constitutes  the  external  history  of  the  Church 
from  that  time  until  the  present. 

I  propose  in  this  course  of  lectures  to  review  the 
relation  of  Church  and  State  from  Constantine  to  the 
Reformation,  and  to  point  out  some  of  the  ways  in  which 
the  history  of  the  Church  has  been  modified  by  that 
relation.  The  connexion  between  the  political  and  the 
religious  history  of  Christendom  has  not  been  brought 
out  as  it  should  be  for  the  information  of  the  general 
reader.  The  secular  historians  have  viewed  it  from  the 
secular  stand-point,  and  have  praised  or  censured  the 
Church  in  different  ages,  according  as  it  has  seemed 
subservient  or  otherwise  to  the  necessities  of  national 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.  7 

politics  ;  while  the  ecclesiastical  historians  have  either 
neglected  the  relation,  or  as  Romanist,  or  Anglican, 
or  Lutheran,  or  Calvinistic,  have  presented  views  of 
it,  colored  by  their  own  bias,  and  such  as  we  of  the 
American  Church,  studying  it  for  ourselves,  should  not 
take. 

Did  Constantine  give  the  Church  his  adhesion,  or 
did  he  only  court  its  alliance  ?  That  is  the  first  ques- 
tion. My  answer  is,  he  did  both — the  first  partially  and 
imperfectly,  the  latter  urgently,  but  both  really.  It  is 
the  fault  of  sceptical  as  well  as  of  shallow  historians, 
that  if  they  think  they  see  men  influenced  by  lower 
motives,  they  cannot  give  them  credit  for  higher 
motives  also,  or  appreciate  the  fact  that  the  actors  in 
the  scenes  they  describe  may  have  a  faith  or  a  purpose 
which  they  do  not  possess,  and  therefore  cannot  con- 
ceive. You  all  know  in  what  darkening  colors  Gibbon 
draws  the  portrait  of  Constantine,  and  how  his  character 
has  suffered  or  been  glorified  according  to  the  controver- 
sial bias  of  the  historian.  To  my  mind  the  position  of 
Constantine  in  history  is  plain.  He  was  a  great  man, 
a  great  soldier,  a  great  organizer,  a  great  ruler,  having 
a  definite  policy  to  which  he  endeavored  to  bend  the 
Church  because  he  believed  in  it.  He  was  prudent, 
temperate  and  continent  by  habit  and  self-restraint.  He 
won  his  battles  by  good  generalship  as  well  as  by  the 
favor  of  Providence.  He  had  the  eye  of  a  great  military 
engineer,  as  he  showed  in  the  choica  of  the  site  for  his 
city   of  Constantinople.      He   organized    the    Eastern 


8         Christetidom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Empire  so  that  it  preserved  the  form  he  gave  it  for  a 
thousand  years  after  his  time.  And  withal  he  was 
naturally  religious.  He  was  a  firm  believer  in  Divine 
Providence  ;  and  he  recognized  in  Christianity  and  the 
Church  the  only  instrument  for  preserving  that  belief, 
or  for  infusing  it  into  the  minds  of  his  subjects,  and 
bringing  them  back  to  that  morality  of  which  heathen- 
ism was  so  utterly  void. 

Now  whatever  were  the  weaknesses  of  Constantine — 
and  personal  vanity  was  undoubtedly  one  of  them — it 
is  not  within  the  limits  of  probability  that  he  allowed 
himself  to  be  swayed,  in  his  treatment  of  the  Church,  by 
the  counsels  of  those  who  happened  to  gain  his  ear.  It 
is  the  convenient  explanation  of  such  as  think  his 
actions  to  be  inconsistent,  to  attribute  them  to  the 
weakness  of  a  sovereign  who  could  be  approached 
through  his  vanity,  and  wrought  upon  by  the  arts  of  the 
courtier.  But  no  one  could  have  reached  the  sole  occu- 
pancy of  the  Imperial  throne  as  Constantine  did,  and 
have  so  organized  the  empire  that  it  existed  with  the 
constitution  he  gave  it,  as  long  as  it  existed  at  all,  who 
did  not  know  his  own  mind  and  pursue  his  own  policy. 
And  just  as  soon  as  we  have  gained  the  key  to  that 
policy,  we  shall  find  it  to  have  been  consistent  through- 
out, and  that  Constantine  not  only  had  it  definitely 
fixed  in  his  own  mind,  but  so  impressed  it  upon  the 
empire  that  it  continued  to  be  the  policy  of  the  emperors 
through  all  the  troubled  and  perplexed  ages  that 
followed.     I  do  not  think  that  Constantine's  adhesion 


From  Constantijie  to  the  Refomnation.         9 

to  Christianity  was  more  than  an  enlightened  Deism  for 
many  years  after  he  began  to  interest  himself  in  the 
affairs  of  the  Church,  He  accepted  the  truths  of  the 
Divine  Unity,  and  of  the  active  intervention  of  Provi- 
dence in  human  affairs  ;  he  recognized  that  Polytheism 
was  dead,  and  that  Atheism  was  no  creed  for  a  man. 
He  allied  himself  with  the  Church,  not  only  to  conciliate 
a  powerful  party  in  his  contests  with  Maxentius  and 
Licinius,  but  because  as  between  Polytheism  and  the 
Divine  Unity  he  was  really  with  the  Church  ;  and  also 
("and  this  was  not  the  least  powerful  of  the  mixed  motives 
which  animated  him)  because  he  saw  in  the  Church  the 
means  of  bringing  the  religious  sanctions  of  moral  con- 
duct into  the  minds  of  his  subjects,  of  making  the 
religious  feeling  a  basis  of  loyalty  to  the  Emperor,  and 
so  of  securing  the  stability  of  the  empire.  But  as 
regards  the  dogmas  of  the  Catholic  faith,  it  seems  to  me 
that  he  was  not  unbelieving,  but  indifferent.  If  we  may 
judge  from  his  somewhat  ambiguous  actions  at  an  early 
period,  as  well  as  his  inconsistency  with  regard  to  the 
Council  of  Nicaea,  his  idea  was  that  he  could  combine 
with  Christianity,  as  he  understood  it,  what  was  really 
or  philosophically  religious  in  the  effete  paganism  of  the 
age,  and  so  attain,  if  not  a  unity  of  belief  among  the 
people  at  large,  yet  such  a  mutual  toleration  and  grad- 
ual convergence  as  might  permit  all  parties  to  acknowl- 
edge that  they  worshipped  the  same  deity — the  same 
Divine  Providence — whether  they  called  him  "Jehovah, 
Jove    or    Lord."      Without    a    real    acceptance    of  the 


lo      C/trislendom  Ecclesiasiical  and  Political 


Catholic  faith,  Constantine  believed  in  the  Church,  and 
therefore  he  would  use  the  Church.  He  attached  the 
Christians,  and  especially  the  bishops,  to  himself  per- 
sonally, by  toleration,  by  justice  and  by  favors.  He 
jrranted  the  clergy  valuable  privileges  and  exemptions. 
He  made  companions  of  ecclesiastics  and  was  inquisitive 
into  their  doctrines.  He  prescribed  the  observance  of 
Sunday,  and  he  not  only  listened  to  sermons  but 
preached  them.  But  he  put  off  his  baptism  until  his 
last  illness,  and  then  received  it  at  the  hands  of  an 
Arian.  And  although  he  convened  the  Ecumenical 
Council  of  Nicaea,  which  settled  once  for  all  the  Faith 
against  Arianism,  yet  after  a  time  he  attempted  to  set 
it  aside.  His  real  desire,  I  doubt  not,  was  for  a  latitu- 
dinarian  creed  which  should  allow  diverse  opinions  in  the 
Church  ;  and  his  chief  interest  was  that  the  Church, 
through  its  teachings  of  morality,  of  order  and  of  loyalty, 
should  be  the  supporter  of  the  empire,  and  that  the 
unity  of  religion  upon  this  basis  should  be  the  guarantee 
of  the  Imperial  throne. 

There  never  was  invented  by  the  mind  of  man  such 
another  perfect  instrument  of  government  as  that 
established  by  Constantine.  Inheriting  the  traditions 
of  the  empire  from  his  predecessors,  and  profiting  by  his 
education  at  the  court  of  the  astute  Diocletian,  he  had 
the  genius  to  plan,  and  the  skill  to  put  in  operation  a 
scheme  of  administration  which  left  nothing  to  be 
desired  except  a  care  for  the  welfare  and  happiness  of 
the  people.     As  an  instrument  of  the  supreme  power  it 


From  ConstcDit-Die  to  the  Reformation.       1 1 

was  perfect  ;  and  it  preserved  the  empire  for  a  thousand 
years,  in  the  midst  of  commotions  internal  and  external, 
against  enemies  abroad  and  discontent  at  home,  not- 
withstanding the  folly  of  rulers,  the  selfishness  of 
ofificials,  the  degradation  of  the  people,  and  the  absence 
of  any  feeling  of  patriotism  in  any  class.  To  one 
situated  as  Constantine  was,  with  the  history  of  his 
associates  and  predecessors  before  his  eyes,  his  object 
as  an  organizer  must  be  to  consolidate  the  government, 
so  that  revolutions  and  rebellions  should  be  void  of  the 
hope  of  success  and  the  throne  stable  and  secure.  The 
Imperial  authority  had  grown  up  by  the  assumption  of 
all  the  effective  powers  of  the  Roman  Republic  into  the 
hands  of  the  man  who  had  the  command  of  the  army. 
Following  the  example  of  the  first  Augustus,  the 
Imperator  was  consul  when  he  chose  to  be,  prince  of  the 
senate,  tribune  of  the  people,  censor,  pontifex  maximus, 
and  invested  with  perpetual  proconsular  authority.  But 
these  diverse  titles  to  power  had  by  this  time  become 
merged  in  the  one  fact  of  universal  rule,  resting  upon 
the  loyalty  of  the  army,  and  terminated  when  the  army 
deposed  or  murdered  its  general,  or  was  defeated  by 
another  general  of  superior  ability  or  fortune.  When 
Constantine  became  sole  head  of  the  empire  and  the 
army,  he  determined  to  put  an  end  to  this  supremacy 
of  the  army,  by  balancing  it  with  other  establishments, 
the  heads  of  which  would  be  sufficiently  jealous  of  each 
other,  if  not  faithful  to  the  reigning  sovereign,  to  be 
unwilling  to  imperil  themselves  by  combining  together 


1 2      Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


for  the  sole  benefit  of  one  of  their  number.  He  there- 
fore reorganized  the  empire.  He  built  Constantinople 
for  a  new  Rome,  free  from  the  traditions,  but  invested 
with  the  privileges  of  old  Rome,  and  he  gave  the  senate 
of  Constantinople  all  the  powers  which  still  remained 
to  the  Roman  senate.  Here  he  fixed  his  residence  and 
the  seat  of  government.  He  divided  the  empire  into 
four  praetorian  prefectures,  these  into  thirteen  dioceses, 
and  these  again  into  provinces,  of  which  there  were 
about  a  hundred  and  twenty.  He  separated  the  military 
authority  of  his  subordinates  from  the  civil  authority, 
and  so  took  away  the  power  of  rebellion.  By  dividing 
the  military,  the  judicial  and  the  financial  departments 
of  the  government,  he  made  each  of  them  a  support  of 
the  throne,  instead  of  dangerous  to  it,  as  they  were 
when  all  combined  in  the  hands  of  subordinates.  It  is 
from  the  reforms  of  Constantine  that  modern  adminis- 
trations have  taken  the  principle  of  government  by 
bureaus,  or  departments. 

It  is  a  great  mistake  to  infer  from  the  history  of 
Gibbon  or  Milman  that  the  Eastern  Empire  was  a  weak 
and  contemptible  affair.  It  was,  measured  by  its  sta- 
bility, the  strongest  secular  power  which  has  ever 
existed,  and  it  might  have  continued  to  this  day  had  it 
known  how  to  do  two  things  :  to  admit  the  people  to 
that  share  in  the  government  which  would  make  it  their 
own,  and  to  refrain  from  the  endeavor  to  force  the 
Church  into  the  framework  of  the  political  machinery. 
But  it  had  no  sympathy  with  the  people,  and  no  real 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.       13 

sense  of  the  spiritual  vocation  of  the  Church.  The 
theory  of  the  empire  was  despotic,  and  according  to  that 
theory,  all  power  over  body  and  soul  must  centre  in  and 
emanate  from  the  emperor.  Around  him  were  grouped 
in  solid  phalanx,  the  legislative,  the  financial,  the  judi- 
cial, the  military  departments,  all  of  which  received 
their  authority  from  him,  carried  out  his  will,  and 
existed  by  his  decree.  But  each  department  was  kept 
carefully  distinct  from  the  others,  graded  into  ranks  of 
subordination,  conducted  on  a  fixed  system  of  procedure, 
and  manned  by  professional  experts,  who  gave  regu- 
larity to  the  administration,  whatever  were  the  charac- 
ter of  the  emperor,  for  the  time  being.  "  The  numerous 
individuals  employed  in  each  ministerial  department  of 
the  state,"  says  Mr.  Finlay,  "consisted  of  {qu.  consti- 
tuted .'')  a  body  of  men  appropriated  to  that  special 
service,  which  they  were  compelled  to  study  attentively, 
to  which  they  devoted  their  lives,  and  in  which  they 
were  sure  to  rise  by  talent  and  industry.  Each  depart- 
ment formed  a  separate  profession,  as  completely 
distinct  and  as  perfectly  organized  in  its  internal 
arrangements  as  the  legal  profession  is  in  modern 
Europe.  A  Roman  emperor  would  no  more  have 
thought  of  suddenly  creating  a  financier  or  an  adminis- 
trator than  a  modern  sovereign  would  think  of  making 
a  lawyer."*  This  circumstance,  he  adds,  affords  an 
explanation    of  the   singular   duration    of  the    Roman 

*  Finlay,  Greeks  under  the  Romans,     p.  238. 


F  4      C liristendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


government  (in  the  East),  and  of  its  inherent  principle 
of  vitality. 

Into  such  a  despotic  framework  of  government  the 
policy  of  Constantine  sought  to  force  the  Church.  That 
power  which  held  in  its  hands  the  practical  instruction 
of  the  people,  the  guidance  of  their  opinions,  and  the 
conduct  of  their  lives,  that  too  must  be  organized  and 
subjected  to  the  Imperial  rule.  That  power  Constantino 
found  embodied  in  the  Christian  Church,  and  nowhere 
else.  He  must  therefore  enter  into  alliance  with  the 
Church  ;  he  must  become  its  head,  as  the  head  of  every 
other  department  of  government  ;  he  must  make  it 
useful  to  the  empire  by  attaching  it  to  the  throne.  As 
Pontifex  Maximus  it  was  his  office  to  regulate  the 
religion  of  the  empire  ;  and  his  belief  in  his  office,  as 
well  as  his  belief  in  the  Church,  led  him  to  make  the 
attempt,  and  to  leave  that  attempt  as  a  part  of  his 
political  legacy  to  his  successors.  "You  are  bishops 
within  the  Church,  I  am  bishop  without,"  was  a  saying 
of  his,  the  meaning  of  which  has  been  thought  uncertain. 
It  merely  meant,  I  am  Pontifex  Maximus  of  the  Roman 
Empire. 

The  first  measures  of  Constantine  were  measures  of 
simple  justice.  In  securing  toleration  for  the  Christians, 
in  restoring  their  estates,  in  granting  the  clergy  ex- 
emption from  public  offices,  he  was  only  placing  the 
Christian  religion  among  the  permitted  religions  of  the 
empire,  and  granting  to  the  Church  the  same  privileges 
as  were  enjoyed  by  the  heathen  priesthood  and  temples. 


Prom  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.       1 5 


Nor  is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  gratitude  of  a  lately 
persecuted  and  proscribed  people  should  be  lavish  in  its 
expressions  of  adulation,  and  generous  in  its  judgment 
of  the  authority  which  so  befriended  them.  And  when 
the  Emperor  interested  himself  more  particularly  in  the 
affairs  of  the  Church,  the  want  of  experience,  if  nothing 
else,  would  make  them  blind  to  the  dangers  of  inter- 
ference. The  Emperor  had  as  much  right  to  be  a 
Christian  as  the  meanest  of  his  subjects,  and  as  much 
right  to  use  his  influence  in  favor  of  the  religion  he 
professed.  It  was  not  until  after  the  fierce  contest  with 
Arianism,  that  the  jealous  watchfulness  of  the  faithful 
was  aroused  against  imperial  tampering  with  the  faith, 
and  political  passion  added  its  fierceness  to  the  odium 
theologicuni  which  has  for  so  many  ages  been  the  bane 
of  controversy. 

To  accomplish  the  end  Constantine  had  in  view,  if 
this  interpretation  of  his  motives  is  correct,  two 
measures  seemed  to  be  necessary;  the  one  to  secure  a 
lax  and  flexible  creed  ;  the  other  to  mould  the  organi- 
zation of  the  Church  into  a  hierarchy,  by  means  of 
which  the  whole  body  could  be  controlled  from  a  single 
centre. 

The  rise  of  the  Arian  heresy  offered  the  opportunity 
to  attempt  the  first.  The  history  of  this  attempt,  and 
of  its  final  defeat  is  an  illustration  of  the  inherent  power 
of  the  Church  to  preserve  the  faith  by  virtue  of  its 
Catholicity,  no  matter  what  forces  are  opposed  to  it. 
The  dogmas  of  the  Catholic  faith  are  facts  ;  they  are 


1 6      Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


dogmas  because  they  are  facts  ;  and  they  are  propounded 
to  our  faith  to  receive  them  as  facts,  upon  the  Divine 
and  human  testimony  by  which  they  are  authenticated. 
The  dogma  of  the  Trinity  is  the  truth  of  the  Trinity,  as 
revealed  through  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  ;  the  dogma  of 
the  Incarnation  is  the  fact  of  the  Incarnation  ;  the 
dogma  or  mystery  of  Redemption  is  the  fact  of 
Redemption.  The  Church  is  a  witness  and  keeper  of 
these  truths,  or  facts,  to  preserve  and  hand  down  the 
faith  in  them  unimpaired  from  age  to  age.  Heresy  is 
the  attempt  to  overthrow  the  belief  of  some  or  other  of 
the  facts  of  the  faith,  because  it  does  not  square  with 
the  preconceived  notions,  or  tendencies  of  thought,  or 
philosophical  reasonings,  or  inveterate  prejudices  which 
have  taken  hold  of  the  mind.  It  has  its  roots  in  the 
previous  tradition  or  training  of  the  individual  or  the 
community  which  adopts  it,  and  it  is  frequently  the 
outgrowth  of  the  national  tendency  of  a  people.  It 
must  be  evident  to  a  thinking  mind,  upon  a  survey  of 
the  history  of  the  four  great  General  Councils,  that  un- 
less the  Church  had  been  Catholic  from  the  beginning, 
the  different  schools  of  Christian  thought  would  have 
diverged  from  one  another  according  to  the  national  or 
sectional  characteristics  of  the  various  peoples,  and  we 
should  have  had,  instead  of  one  universal  Creed,  a  mul- 
titude of  doctrines  as  diverse  as  the  philosophies  of  the 
ancient  world.  Each  national  or  sectional  tendency 
would  have  modified  the  faith  in  the  direction  of  its  own 
one-sided  bias,  and  there  would  have  been,  for  exam- 


From  Constantine  to  the  ReforTnation.       i  7 

pie,  a  rationalizing  and  humanitarian  creed  at  Antioch, 
and  a  pantheistic  and  mystical  creed  at  Alexandria. 
But  inasmuch  as  every  part  of  the  Church  must  be  in 
communion  with  every  other  part,  in  order  that  the 
Church  might  be  Catholic  or  universal,  the  opposite 
tendencies  providentially  neutralized  each  other,  and 
preserved  the  equilibrium  of  the  faith.  And  that  is  why, 
in  the  order  of  Divine  Providence,  and  under  the  gov- 
erning influence  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  no  body  less  than 
the  whole  Catholic  or  universal  Church  can  define  the 
faith  ;  because  there  is  always  in  the  schismatical,  or 
isolated  body,  a  tendency  to  aberration,  which  must  be 
corrected  through  the  communion  of  the  members  with 
one  another  in  the  unity  of  the  Spirit  and  the  bond  of 
peace.  The  faith  is  a  deposit  ;  it  is  not  an  invention, 
not  a  development,  not  a  reasoned-out  system.  It  was 
given  once  for  all,  to  be  handed  down  as  it  was  received; 
its  mysteries  are  facts  which  once  true  are  always  true; 
and  when  once  the  fact  is  assailed  by  a  false  logic  or 
false  philosophy,  the  false  logic  or  false  philosophy  must 
be  overthrown  by  those  who  are  not  misled  by  it  ;  and 
then,  when  that  is  done,  the  truth  remains  what  it  had 
been,  and  the  Church  continues  to  profess  the  faith  once 
delivered  to  the  saints. 

Now  the  Arian  heresy  was  one  in  which  the  peculiar 
tendency  of  the  school  of  Antioch  had  thus  perverted 
the  faith.  The  denial  of  the  uncreated  Deity  of  the 
only-begotten  Son  was  felt  by  the  heathen  themselves 
to  open  the  way  for  Polytheism  into  the  Church.     The 


I  8      Christendom  Ecclesiastical  a7id  Political 

fact  of  an  aberration  came  to  light  through  the  connec- 
tion of  Arius,  who  had  been  a  pupil  of  Lucian  of  Antioch, 
with  the  Church  of  Alexandria.  That,  however,  was 
only  the  manifestation  of  the  fact  ;  the  wide- spread 
sympathy  which  Arius  met  with  in  the  East  showed 
that  the  tendency  was  deep-seated  ;  and  the  time  had 
come  when  the  Church  Catholic  must  reassert  the  fact 
that  our  blessed  Lord  is  very  and  eternal  God,  in  a 
form  v.'hich  would  not  only  put  down  the  heresy,  but 
correct  the  tendency  which  gave  rise  to  it.  Had  Con- 
stantine  not  mingled  in  the  controversy,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  the  previous  methods  of  the  Church,  which 
had  been  found  effective  in  all  other  cases,  would  have 
been  sufficient  in  this.  But  in  the  Divine  Providence, 
as  if  to  stamp  at  the  beginning,  the  indelible  character 
upon  the  union  of  Church  and  State,  and  to  frustrate 
forever  the  attempt  to  make  the  faith  indefinite  from 
motives  cf  political  expediency,  the  Emperor  was  led 
to  convene  the  Council  of  Nicaea,  and  in  that,  the  first 
Ecumenical  Council,  the  faith  was  asserted  in  its  integ- 
rity, and  the  term  "  of  one  substance  with  the  Father," 
was  added  to  the  creed,  to  make  Arianism  impossible 
forever  after  in  the  Church. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Constantine  did  not  desire 
this  result.  His  letter  to  Alexander  and  Arius  jointly 
shows  that  he  considered  the  question  whether  our 
blessed  Lord  is  God  to  be  worshipped,  or  a  creature 
whom  to  worship  is  idolatry,  an  unimportant  one,  on 
which  they  might  agree  to  differ.     Indeed  I  think  his 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.       19 

assembling  of  the  Nicene  Council  itself  had  as  much 
connection  in  his  mind  with  the  celebration  of  his 
Vicennalia  as  with  the  vindication  of  the  faith  of  the 
Church.  He  intended  it  as  a  state  pageant,  a  demon- 
stration of  his  adoption  of  Christianity  as  the  state 
religion  ;  and  he  hoped  that  he  could  persuade  the 
Christians  to  cease  their  disputes,  and  bury  the  question 
in  silence.  But  he  had  seen  and  known  too  much  of 
the  temper  of  the  Church,  of  its  constancy  under  per- 
secution, to  offer  direct  opposition  when  the  decision 
was  determined  on  ;  the  unanimity  of  the  decree  (all 
signed  it  but  five)  was  too  overwhelming  ;  and  he  con- 
tented himself  with  banishing  the  heretical  leaders  for 
the  present,  and  waiting  for  the  time  when  he  could 
quietly  set  aside  the  Council.^  Soon  after  the  adjourn- 
ment of  the  Council  he  made  a  decree  that  no  one  should 
be  admitted  into  the  ranks  of  the  clergy,  except  to  fill 
vacancies,  and  that  none  should  be  ordained  who  were 
liable  to  the  curia,\  that  is,  who  by  their  wealth  were 
responsible  for  the  public  and  municipal  service — a  law 
from  which,  of  course,  a  dispensation  could  be  obtained 
by  imperial  favor,  and  in  which  there  lies  the  germ  of 
the  congi  d'  elire  which  to  this  day  places  the  nomina- 
tion of  the  English  bishops  in  the  power  of  the  crown. 
After  some  dela}'  he  revoked  the  sentence  of  banish- 
ment against  Arius  and  his  followers,  and,  professing  to 

*  Was  not  the  cloud  upon  Cons.antine  during  the  latter  part  of  his  life 
due  in  part  to  disappointment  at  the  turn  of  ecclesiastical  affairs  ? 
f  Fleury,  B.  XI.,  31. 


20      Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


believe  that  they  were  really  at  one  with  the  Church  in 
doctrine,  ordered  that  the  arch-heretic  should  be 
received  to  communion,  a  profanation  which  the  death 
of  Arius  prevented.  He  permitted  the  Arian  party  to 
depose  Eustathius,  the  Bishop  of  Antioch,  and  to 
intrigue  against  St.  Athanasius,  whom  he  banished  in 
the  year  before  his  death.     These  acts  are  significant. 

The  history  of  the  Eastern  Church  for  the  half-cen- 
tury between  the  Council  of  Nicaea  and  that  of 
Constantinople  is,  in  reality,  not  so  much  the  history 
of  the  conflict  of  the  Church  with  an  obstinate  and  wide- 
spread heresy,  as  it  is  that  of  the  Church  with  the 
Imperial  policy.  The  scheme  of  Constantine  broke 
down  at  the  beginning  so  far  as  the  faith  was  concerned ; 
and  yet  it  continued  to  be  the  policy  of  the  empire,  and 
the  most  desperate  efforts  were  made  to  insure  its 
success.  We  are  in  the  habit  of  calling  Constantius  and 
Valens  Arians,  and  of  accounting  for  their  conduct  by 
the  assumption  that  they  fell  under  the  influence  of  the 
subtle  Arian  leaders.  The  expressions  are  misleading. 
It  is  not  an  uncommon  experience  in  state-craft,  that 
subtle  and  wily  men,  who  think  they  are  using  a  ruler 
for  their  own  purposes,  are  in  reality  being  used  by  him 
for  his  purposes.  I  believe  that  this  happened  to  the 
Arian  leaders  at  this  time,  and  that  the  confusion  they 
wrought  was  connived  at  by  the  emperors,  not  so  much 
out  of  sympathy  with  their  doctrines,  or  belief  in  their 
heresy,  as  in  pursuance  of  a  deeper  policy,  directed  to 
the  complete  subjection  of  the   Church  to  the  State. 


From  Constantiiie  to  the  Refoimiation.       2  i 

What  was  demanded  of  the  Catholic  bishops  was  not 
that  they  should  give  up  their  own  personal  belief  in  the 
Eternal  Son,  but  that  they  should  admit  to  the  com- 
munion of  the  Church  on  equal  terms,  those  who  denied 
Him  to  be  consubstantial  with  the  Father.  The 
Emperor  Constantius  was  not  so  much  an  Arian  as  a 
Latitudinarian.  He  would  have  been  just  as  averse  to 
a  definite  and  exclusive  Arian  creed  for  the  universal 
creed  of  the  Church  as  to  the  Nicene  Creed,  and  he 
tolerated  and  encouraged  the  making  of  creed  after 
creed,  until  he  could  find  one  sufficiently  indefinite  for 
his  purpose.  The  real  creed  of  the  so-called  Arian 
emperors  was  the  creed  of  the  Council  of  Rimini  (A.D. 
359);  and  it  was  their  creed  because  on  the  point  in 
dispute  it  meant  nothing  and  it  said  nothing.  It  was 
suited  to  the  imperial  policy,  not  because  it  confessed 
Arianism,  but  because  it  would  permit  the  orthodox, 
as  well  as  the  Arian  of  whatever  shade  of  impiety  to 
confess  it  alike.  It  said  the  Son  was  like  the  Father — 
and  surely  no  one  would  deny  that  however  unlike  He 
might  be  in  some  respects,  yet  there  was  something  at 
least  in  which  He  was  like  the  Father.  It  was  a  creed, 
therefore,  admirably  constructed  to  allow  conformity 
without  faith.  And  this  was  just  what  the  Emperor 
wanted  ;  and  therefore  the  Creed  of  Rimini  became  for 
a  few  years  the  creed  of  the  empire,  while  the  Creed  of 
Nicaea  remained  the  creed  of  the  Church. 

It  was  essential  to  the  success  of  the  imperial  policy 
that  the  compliant  or  the  heterodox  should  have  pos- 


2  2       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  ajid  Political 

session  of  the  principal  sees,  so  as  to  make  them  centres 
of  the  leaven  by  which  the  whole  body  might  be 
leavened.  Arian  prelates  were  placed  by  intrigue  and 
violence  in  Constantinople  and  Antioch,  and  strenuous 
efforts  were  made  to  displace  St.  Athanasius  from 
Alexandria.  That  great  saint,  whose  stainless  charac- 
ter, inflexible  orthodoxy,  and  indefatigable  energy  have 
extorted  from  the  great  sceptical  historian  almost  the 
only  sincere  eulogy  he  has  pronounced  upon  a  Christian 
prelate,  was  alternately  banished  by  one  emperor  and 
restored  by  another  for  a  period  of  more  than  twenty 
years,  and  saw  no  less  than  three  Arian  bishops  intruded 
into  his  see  during  his  enforced  absences.  The  disorders, 
the  intrigues,  the  injustice,  the  violence,  the  insults,  the 
murders,  the  tyranny  incident  to  the  attempt  thus  to 
revolutionize  the  Eastern  Church,  may  be  read  in  his- 
tory. They  would  throw  discredit  upon  the  Christians, 
were  they  not  so  plainly  and  manifestly  the  deeds  of 
the  political  power  in  its  effort  to  enslave  the  Church. 

The  inherent  weakness  of  Arianism  as  a  positive  belief 
was  evident  just  as  soon  as  Julian  the  Apostate  suc- 
ceeded Constantius,  and  proclaimed  that  contemptuous 
toleration  by  which  he  hoped  to  leave  the  Christian 
factions  free  to  destroy  each  other,  and  the  religion  they 
professed.  The  people  welcomed  back  their  Catholic 
pastors  with  enthusiasm,  and  the  Arians  found  them- 
selves bereft  of  power  and  influence  as  soon  as  they 
ceased  to  be  the  tools  of  the  Emperor.  They  obtained 
a  temporary  influence  again  under  Vaiens,  and  again 


From  Constant ine  to  the  Reformation.       23 

threw  the  Church  into  disorder  ;  but  under  the  lead  of 
St.  Basil  the  Church  fought  a  good  fight,  and  the  con- 
test came  to  an  end  when  Theodosius  obtained  the 
empire,  and  the  Council  of  Constantinople  reaffirmed 
the  Nicene  Creed. 

The  Council  of  Constantinople  (A.D.  381)  marks  the 
end  of  the  Arian  controversy.  Just  as  soon  as  the 
Emperor  gave  up  the  attempt  to  force  it  upon  the 
Church,  the  natural  weakness  of  the  heresy  showed 
itself,  and  it  fell  into  insignificance,  although  it  remained 
the  religion  of  certain  Gothic  tribes  who  had  been  con- 
verted from  heathenism  under  its  ascendancy.  The 
mere  politician  or  indifferentist  may  think  the  persist- 
ence of  the  Church  to  be  bigotry,  and  the  questions 
involved  to  be  of  small  account  ;  the  infidel  may  ridi- 
cule the  distinction  between  homooiisios  ^x\6.homoiousios ; 
but  the  sincere  believer,  who  trusts  to  our  blessed  Lord 
for  salvation  here  and  hereafter,  who  believes  Him  to 
be  able  to  save  to  the  uttermost  because  He  is  God,  and 
who  therefore  worships  Him  as  God — God  of  God, 
Very  God  of  Very  God — knows  the  importance  of  "the 
faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints,"  and  against  the  Rock 
of  that  faith,  the  waves  of  worldly  policy  dash  in  vain. 
The  constancy  of  the  saints  had  won  the  victory.  \  The 
Emperor  henceforth  could  have  no  influence  in  the 
Church,  except  as  he  professed  her  faith.  Whatever 
the  intrigues  and  tumults  which  disfigure  the  history  of 
the  Great  Councils  from  this  time  on,  this  principle  was 
settled  ;  and  the  sustaining  power  of  the  Church's  Head, 


24      Cliristcjidoui  Ecclesiastical  and  Political         ^ 

and  the  guiding  influence  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  made  the 
controversies  and  the  scandals  of  which  we  read,  the 
means  to  bring  out  the  faith  clearer  and  clearer  by  the 
successive  expositions  of  Catholic  dogma  which  they 
compelled. ) 

Such,  then,  was  the  outcome  of  the  imperial  effort  to 
make  the  Church  politically  useful  by  giving  it  a  lax  and 
flexible  creed.  The  logic  of  events  gave  more  success 
to  the  other  measure  I  spoke  of  as  implied  in  the  effort 
of  Constantine  to  annex  it  to  the  throne — the  conform- 
ing the  ecclesiastical  organization  to  that  of  the  empire. 
In  an  aristocratic  state  of  society  the  idea  of  rank  and 
precedence  is  a  powerful  factor  ;  and  when  those  who 
hold  high  office  in  the  State  are  decorated  with  titles  of 
nobility,  it  is  but  insisting  on  the  equal  dignity  at  least 
of  the  service  of  the  Church,  to  give  its  chief  officers 
similar  titles  of  respect.  That  which  would  seem  mere 
assumption  under  a  simpler  and  more  democratic  policy 
is  only  proper  and  decent  in  this  case.  Little  or  noth- 
ing was  done  under  Constantine  himself  in  this  direc- 
tion. The  sixth  canon  of  the  Council  of  Nicasa 
recognized  the  Bishops  of  Rome,  Alexandria  and 
Antioch,  as  possessing  certain  peculiar  privileges,  and 
the  seventh  gave  an  honorary  precedence  to  the  Bishop 
of  Jerusalem.  The  Council  of  Constantinople  advanced 
the  bishop  of  that  city  above  Alexandria  and  Antioch 
by  its  third  canon  :  "  That  the  Bishop  of  Constantino- 
ple have  the  prerogative  of  honor  next  after  the  Bishop 
of  Rome,  because  Constantinople  is  New  Rome."    It  also 


From  Consiantine  to  the  Reformation.       25 

made  a  closer  approximation  to  the  imperial  organiza- 
tion by  its  second  and  sixth  canons.  I  have  already 
mentioned  that  Constantine  divided  the  empire  into 
four  Praetorian  Prefectures,  these  into  thirteen  Dioceses*^ 
and  these  into  about  120  provinces.  The  Council  of 
Constantinople  erected  the  great  synod  of  the  Diocese 
into  a  Court  of  Appeals,  forbidding  bishops  to  go  out- 
side with  their  cases,  and  thus  constituted  the  bishop 
of  the  principal  city,  as  president  of  that  synod,  an 
ecclesiastic  of  superior  rank  under  the  title  of  exarch 
or  primate — exarch  in  the  East,  primate  in  the  West. 
The  direct  influence  of  the  emperor,  however,  does  not 
appear  until  the  Emperor  Marcian  procured  from  the 
Council  of  Chalcedon  the  completion  of  the  Patriarchal 
system.  Assuming  that  Rome,  Alexandria,  and  An- 
tioch  were  Patriarchates  by  the  recognition  of  their 
privileges  at  the  Council  of  Nic.aea  (though  the  canon 
of  that  council  does  not  really  admit  that  inference), 
the  Council  of  Chalcedon,  by  its  ninth,  seventeenth  and 
twenty-eighth  canons,  enlarged  and  fixed  the  patri- 
archal jurisdiction  and  privileges  of  the  Church  of 
Constantinople,  giving  it  authority  over  the  Dioceses  of 
Thrace,  Asia  and  Pontus,  with  the  power  of  ordaining 
and  requiring  canonical  obedience  from  the  metropoli- 
tans of  those  Dioceses,  and  also  the  right  to  adjudicate 

*The  Dicecesis  of  the  Empire,  and  of  the  Imperial  Church  must  not  be 
confounded  with  the  modern  Diocese,  the  jurisdiction  of  a  single  bishop. 
The  modern  Diocese  is  included  in  a  province  ;  the  ancient  Dicecesis 
included  several  provinces.  Mistakes  are  constantly  made  in  quoting  the 
canon  of  Constantinople,  through  forgetfulness  of  this  difference. 


26      Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


appeals  in  causes  ecclesiastical  from  the  whole  Eastern 
Church.  The  Bishop  of  Jerusalem  also  obtained  in  this 
council  patriarchal  authority  over  Palestine.  The 
organization  of  the  Church  was  thus  conformed  to  that 
of  the  empire,  the  patriarchs  corresponding  to  the 
Praetorian  Prefects,  the  exarchs,  to  the  governors  of 
the  Dioceses,  and  the  metropolitans  to  the  governors  of 
the  provinces — the  Bishop  of  Rome  being  given  by  an 
edict  of  Valentinian  III,  of  the  year  445,  supreme 
appellate  jurisdiction  in  the  West,  and  the  Bishop  of 
Constantinople,  by  these  canons  of  Chalcedon,  supreme 
appellate  jurisdiction  in  the  East. 

The  intention  of  the  Emperor  in  making  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Constantinople  the  chief  ecclesiastic  of  tht 
empire,  and  as  such  the  Minister  of  Religion  in  the 
imperial  cabinet,  undoubtedly  was  to  rule  the  Church 
through  him.  The  scheme  was  not  a  complete  success. 
The  imperial  influence  being  much  more  direct  in  the 
appointment  of  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople  than  of 
the  others,  was  exerted  to  procure  as  occupants  of  that 
see,  persons  of  administrative  ability  and  compliant 
disposition,  rather  than  great  theologians  or  able 
Churchmen  ;  and  there  are  several  instances,  as  Necta- 
rius,  Tarasius  and  Photius,  where  laymen  who  had  been 
trained  in  the  civil  service  were  promoted  to  be  bishops 
of  the  imperial  city.  The  weakness  of  the  patriarchs  of 
Constantinople  as  religious  leaders,  through  this  subor- 
dination to  the  court,  was  fatal  to  their  supremacy,  and 
frustrated  the  attempt  to  enslave  the  Church  through 
their  instrumentality. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        2  7 

Dean  Milman  remarks  that  the  Episcopate  of  St. 
John  Chrysostom  was  the  last  attempt  of  a  bishop  of 
Constantinople  to  be  independent  of  the  political  power, 
and  that  his  fate  involved  the  freedom  of  the  Church  of 
that  city.  The  greatest  preacher  of  Christendom  and 
one  of  its  purest  saints,  he  was  called  by  the  influence 
of  the  favorite  eunuch  of  Arcadius,  the  degenerate  son  of 
the  great  Theodosius,  from  being  a  presbyter  of  Antioch 
to  the  bishopric  of  Constantinople,  that  his  eloquence 
might  delight  the  people  and  glorify  the  court.  But  he 
was  too  honest,  and  too  much  in  earnest  to  deal  in 
flatteries  of  the  great,  or  to  connive  at  the  sins  of  the 
powerful,  and  he  speedily  fell  into  disfavor  with  the 
Empress  Eudoxia,  for  the  boldness  with  which  he  re- 
buked her  luxury  and  extravagance.  In  the  meantime 
the  Bishop  of  Alexandria  was  deeply  offended  at  being 
reduced,  by  the  canon  of  Constantinople  above  alluded 
to,  from  the  second  to  the  third  rank,  and  was  prepared 
to  take  advantage  of  any  circumstance  which  might 
enable  him  to  humiliate  the  Bishop  of  Constantinople. 
The  occasion  came  in  this  quarrel  of  Eudoxia  with 
Chrysostom.  Theophilus  of  Alexandria,  who  was  a 
bold  and  unscrupulous  man,  was  called  in  to  pass  upon 
him  an  ecclesiastical  sentence,  and  he  willingly  lent 
himself  to  the  malice  of  the  court,  which  held  over  him 
the  menace  of  his  own  prosecution  for  offences  of  which 
he  was  accused,  in  case  he  failed  to  carry  out  its  wishes. 
Chrysostom  was  unjustly  condemned  at  the  Council  of 
the  Oak,  and  under  color  of  that  condemnation  he  was 


2  8      Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

banished  and  died  of  the  barbarous  treatment  he 
received  in  exile.  His  successors,  having  his  example 
before  them,  were  more  prudent  and  politic  ;  and 
though  there  were  good  and  holy  and  brave  men  among 
them,  the  patriarchate  of  Constantinople  was  never  able 
to  assert  itself  against  the  imperial  power. 

Before  we  go  on  to  consider  the  effect  of  the  great 
Nestorian  and  Eutychian  controversies  upon  the  Church 
and  upon  the  State,  it  is  necessary  to  say  something 
more  about  the  imperial  government  as  it  was  adminis- 
tered in  the  fifth  century,  and  afterwards.  Upon  the 
death  of  Theodosius  in  395,  his  sons,  Arcadius  and 
Honorius,  succeeded  him,  the  former  ruling  in  the  East 
and  the  other  in  the  West.  From  this  time  forth,  the 
East  and  the  West  were  disunited,  not  again  to  be 
joined  together  in  their  whole  extent  ;  and  what  I  have 
further  to  say  in  this  lecture  relates  to  the  course  of 
ecclesiastical  history  in  the  Eastern  Empire.  Arcadius 
was  succeeded  in  408  by  his  son  Theodosius  11.,  who 
reigned  until  450,  when  he  was  succeeded  by  Marcian 
as  the  nominal  husband  of  his  sister  Pulcheria.  The 
dynasty  of  Theodosius  came  to  an  end  in  457.  The 
emperors  had  now  become,  through  the  reforms  of  Con- 
stantine,  civil  rulers,  rather  than  military  dictators. 
The  feeble  children  of  the  great  Theodosius  were  unable 
to  command  the  armies,  or  to  direct  the  policy  of  the 
empire  ;  they  were  protected  from  destruction  as  well 
as  deprived  of  influence  by  the  etiquette  and  ceremonial 
of  the  court  ;  the  public  business  was  carried  on  through 


Prom  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        29 

the  machinery  which  had  been  invented  for  that  pur- 
pose ;  it  was  designed  as  well  to  guard  against  the 
disasters  invited  by  the  weakness  and  folly  of  an 
incompetent  sovereign,  as  to  execute  the  will  and 
increase  the  power  of  an  able  ruler  ;  and  it  proved  itself 
competent  to  accomplish  both  purposes. 

The  imperial  government  possessed  two  great  advan- 
tages over  all  other  governments  then  existing. 
One  was  the  scientific  administration  of  law  and  justice, 
the  other  was  the  regular  system  of  the  civil  service  ; 
both  of  which  provided  a  career  for  an  educated  laity, 
attached  them  to  the  existing  order,  and  enabled  them 
to  control  and  to  prompt  the  public  opinion.  And  op- 
pressive as  were  the  burdens  which  the  imperial  gov- 
ernment imposed  upon  the  people,  there  was  at  least 
that  regular  administration  which  made  their  extent 
and  effect  calculable  by  the  prudent  foresight  of  the 
citizen,  and  that  order  which  contrasted  favorably  with 
the  disorder  of  barbarian  rule — and  all  rule  but  that  of 
the  empire  was  barbarian.  The  administration  and  the 
empire  therefore  remained  firm,  though  emperors  were 
set  up  and  put  down  by  revolution  after  revolution, 
and  dynasty  succeeded  dynasty  after  the  third  or  fourth 
generation.  The  impulse  given  to  lay  education 
through  the  needs  of  the  civil  service  was  a  powerful 
conservative  influence  in  the  East.  M.  Guizot,  in  his 
Lectures  on  Civilization  in  France,  speaks  of  the  nu- 
merous schools  in  Gaul  in  the  fifth  century,  and  of  the 
support  that  was  given  to  them   by  the  government. 


30      C hristendo7n  Ecclesiastical  arid  Political 

These  schools  shared  in  the  decay  of  the  Western 
Empire,  because  under  the  barbarian  rulers  they  opened 
no  professional  career  to  the  scholars  ;  and  I  may  re- 
mark in  passing,  that  it  is  altogether  unjust  to  charge 
the  Church  with  responsibility  for  the  ignorance  of 
what  are  called  the  dark  ages.  The  Church  suffered 
severely  from  the  calamities  of  the  times  ;  it  did  all  it 
could  (as  Dr.  Maitland  has  shown)  to  keep  the  light 
burning  during  that  period  of  transition  ;  and  it  was  the 
most  potent  factor  in  the  revival  of  learning,  when 
society  began  to  recover  itself.  In  the  East  it  was 
different.  The  permanence  of  the  imperial  administra- 
tion ensured  a  career  for  the  advocates,  the  judges, 
the  secretaries,  the  accountants,  the  registrars  of  the 
empire,  and  the  schools  which  became  useless  in  the 
West  flourished  vigorously  in  the  East.  Theodosius 
II.  founded  a  great  university  at  Constantinople,  en- 
dowing it  with  the  means  of  employing  fifteen  pro- 
fessors of  Greek  and  thirteen  of  Latin  learning  and 
literature,  with  two  professors  of  law  and  one  of 
philosophy.  In  the  reign  of  Justinian  it  possessed 
a  philosophical,  philological,  legal  and  theological 
faculty.  The  schools  of  Athens  maintained  their 
reputation  for  rhetoric  and  philosophy.  Alexandria, 
in  addition  to  its  other  faculties,  was  pre-eminent  in 
astronomy  and  medicine.  The  school  at  Berytus  was 
distinguished  for  the  study  of  jurisprudence  ;  that  at 
Edessa  for  Syriac  as  well  as  Greek  learning;  at  Antioch 
and    elsewhere    there    were    universities.       The    youth 


Profn  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        3 1 

who  were  ambitious  of  places  in  the  public  service  or 
in  the  legal  profession  attended  them,  and  profited  by 
them  ;  and  there  was  for  this  reason,  until  a  late  period, 
an  educated  laity,  as  well  as  an  educated  clergy  in  the 
Eastern  Empire.  These  educated  laymen  found  their 
employment  in  the  various  government  offices  ;  they 
became  familiar  with  the  routine  and  system  of  the 
administration,  and  enabled  it  to  work  with  regularity 
and  order.  In  the  department  of  law  especially  they 
were  pre-eminent.  Not  only  is  the  excellence  of  the 
Roman  law  admitted  as  an  historical  fact  ;  but  it 
has  powerfully  affected  the  jurisprudence  of  all  modern 
societies.  Even  the  Common  Law,  so  called,  though 
apparently  antagonistic  to  what  is  called  the  Civil,  that 
is  the  Roman  Law,  is  admitted  by  those  who  are 
learned  in  legal  antiquities  to  be  indebted  to  it  in  many 
ways  ;  while  in  those  countries  and  states  where  the 
Common  Law  does  not  hold,  the  entire  fabric  reposes 
upon  the  solid  foundation  of  the  Codes  of  Theodosius 
and  Justinian.  While  the  emperors  took  to  themselves 
the  supreme  legislative  authority,  and  were  able,  as  an 
abstract  right,  to  ordain  anything  whatever  to  be  law 
if  they  so  pleased  ;  yet  by  the  systematic  method  of 
promulgating  laws,  by  the  procedure  of  the  courts,  by  the 
reasoning  of  advocates,  the  authority  of  jurisconsults, 
and  the  reviews  of  courts  of  appeal,  this  abstract  right 
was  practically  restricted,  and  the  administration  of 
justice  was  based  on  certain  and  well-known  rules  and 
maxims,  which  gave  confidence  and  ensured  stability 


32      Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

to  the  judicial  system,  and  confirmed  the  authority  of 
the  judges,  and  of  the  empire  of  which  they  were  the 
officials.  The  senate  of  ConstaHtinople,  again,  pos- 
sessed great  authority  in  controlling  the  general 
administration,  while  the  dependent  position  of  its 
members  prevented  that  authority  being  regarded  with 
jealousy.  The  permanent  existence  of  this  body, 
which,  by  the  legal  fiction  that  Constantinople  was 
New  Rome,  ana  therefore  Rome  itself,  had  been  given 
the  privileges  of  the  senate  of  Old  Rome,  enabled  it  to 
establish  fixed  ma.xims  of  policy,  and  to  make  these 
maxims  the  grounds  of  the  ordinary  decisions  of 
government.  By  these  means  a  systematic  adminis- . 
tration  was  firmly  consolidated. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  there  were  elements  ol 
weakness  and  disorder — clay  mingled  with  the  iron  of 
this  stupendous  organization.  The  government  was 
entirely  separate  from  the  people  ;  its  interests  were 
diverse  from  theirs,  and  it  consulted  their  welfare  no 
further  than  was  necessary  to  secure  its  own  ends. 
The  people  had  no  voice  in  determining  the  public 
policy;  they  had  no  influence  in  declaring  war  or 
making  peace ;  they  had  no  power  of  initiating  or 
approving  or  rejecting  proposed  legislation  ;  they  made 
no  grants  of  supplies  ;  they  were  unable  to  refuse  the 
extortionate  demands  of  the  sovereign,  or  to  apportion 
the  taxes  that  must  be  paid.  The  principal  function 
of  the  people  in  the  State  was  to  furnish  the  means 
for   the    imperial    expenditure,    for    the    luxury  of    the 


From  Conslantme  to  the  Reformation.        33 

court,  for  the  extravagance  of  the  emperor  and  his 
favorites,  for  the  expense  of  the  army  and  the  civil 
service,  and,  as  the  empire  declined  in  power,  for  the 
subsidies  of  the  barbarians.  The  taxes,  therefore,  were 
at  all  times  oppressive,  and  sometimes  ruinous.  The 
efforts  of  the  fisc,  as  Mr.  Finlay  remarks,  were  directed 
to  sweep  the  entire  surplus  of  produce,  and  the  entire 
circulating  medium  year  by  year  into  the  imperial 
treasury.  Time  was  counted  by  the  indiction  of  fifteen 
years,  when  a  new  valuation  of  the  empire  was  made  for 
the  purposes  of  taxation.  Every  estate  was  taxed  to 
the  utmost,  and  to  permit  property  to  depreciate  in 
value  or  productiveness  was  a  crime  against  the 
emperor.  The  cultivator  of  the  soil  became  attached 
to  the  soil  ;  he  could  not  leave  it,  because  the  proprietor 
was  liable  for  his  capitation  tax,  as  well  as  for  the  tax 
upon  the  land  ;  and  this  was  the  origin  of  serfdom. 
The  members  of  a  municipality,  the  Curiales,  were 
jointly  liable  for  the  whole  tax  levied  upon  the 
community,  and  if  one  failed  from  inability  to  pay,  the 
others  must  make  it  up  ;  the  duties  of  the  Curia,  there- 
fore, became  so  onerous,  that  persons  were  willing 
sometimes  to  give  away  all  their  property  rather  than 
discharge  them,  and  laws  had  to  be  passed  to  prevent 
their  doing  so.  The  proprietor  of  land  could  not  enter 
the  army,  because  it  was  his  duty  to  work  his  land, 
that  he  might  have  wherewith  to  pay  his  taxes,  and  so 
the  military  spirit  died  out  from  the  class  that  makes 
the  best  soldiers,  the  army  was  recruited  from  the  lower 


34      Christendom  Ecclesiasticat  and  Political 

classes  and  the  barbarian  mercenaries,  and  the  country, 
being  destitute  of  a  militia,  lay  open  to  the  incursions  of 
the  barbarians.  In  this  state  of  affairs  there  was  no 
political  public  opinion,  none  of  that  healthy  stimulus 
of  political  discussion  which  animates  freemen,  no 
possibility  of  intelligent  patriotism  or  enlightened 
public  spirit  on  the  part  of  the  citizen  ;  even  the 
interest  in  municipal  affairs  was  destroyed,  and  the 
intellectual  power  of  the  people,  deprived  of  its  natural 
outlets  in  secular  affairs,  indulged  a  morbid  appetite 
for  theological  wrangling,  or  for  debasing  superstitions. 
Here  I  must  interpose  a  parenthesis  upon  the  genesis 
of  superstitions.  It  is  of  course  a  commonplace  of 
modern  scepticism  to  charge  the  growth  of  supersti- 
tion upon  the  clergy.  The  accusation  is  unjust.  The 
superstitions  which  disfigure  the  "  dark  ages "  were 
"survivals,"  as  Mr.  Tyler  calls  them,  of  lay  heathenism. 
Mr.  Finlay  points  out  how  it  was  in  the  East  :  "  Under 
the  jealous  system  of  the  imperial  government,  the 
isolation  of  place  and  class  became  so  complete  that 
even  the  highest  members  of  the  aristocracy  received 
their  ideas  from  the  inferior  domestics  with  whom  they 
habitually  associated  in  their  own  households — not 
from  the  transitory  intercourse  they  held  with  able  and 
experienced  men  of  their  own  class,  or  with  philosophic 
or  religious  teachers.  Nurses  and  slaves  implanted 
their  ignorant  superstitions  in  the  households  where 
the  rulers  of  the  empire  and  the  provinces  were  reared  ; 
and  no   public    assemblies    existed    where   discussions 


Prom  Constantine  to  th^  Reformation.       35 

could  efface  such  prejudices.  Family  education  became 
a  more  influential  feature  of  society  than  public  in- 
struction ;  and  though  family  education,  from  the 
fourth  to  the  seventh  century  appears  to  have  improved 
the  morals  of  the  population,  it  certainly  increased 
their  superstition  and  limited  their  understanding." 

Returning  to  our  immediate  subject,  I  remark  that 
the  history  of  the  Eastern  Church  cannot  be  understood 
without  taking  account  of  such  facts,  as  I  have  above 
alluded  to.  That  the  evils  which  affected  the  Church 
for  many  ages  are  to  be  traced  to  the  imperialist 
scheme  of  Constantine,  I  believe  to  be  capable  of 
demonstration,  and  when  we  have  Church  historians  of 
our  own,  who  can  survey  the  field  from  our  American 
stand-point  of  an  Apostolic  Church  free  from  state 
control,  it  will  be  demonstrated  ;  and  Church  history 
will  cease  to  be  the  puzzling  and  dreary  record  that  it 
is  in  the  hands  of  mere  Anglicans,  or  German  Neolo- 
gists,  or  secular  politicians.  Not  only  is  injustice  done 
to  several  great  emperors  by  viewing  their  characters 
through  the  mist  of  theological  prejudice,  without  an 
appreciation  of  their  difficulties  as  inheritors  of  a  system 
that  was  too  strong  for  them  ;  but  equal  or  greater 
injustice  is  done  to  the  Churchmen  of  this  period  by  a 
want  of  knowledge  of  the  circumstances  by  which  they 
were  surrounded. 

St.  Cyril  of  Alexandria,  perhaps,  of  all  the  Greek 
Fathers,  has  suffered  most  from  this  cause.  The  part 
he   took   in    the   condemnation    of  Nestorius    for    the 


36       C hristendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

heresy  which  bears  his  name,  has  been  misjudged,  as  if 
all  the  complications  of  the  political  situation  with 
their  consequences  were  to  be  laid  at  his  door.  Nesto- 
rius,  like  St.  Chrysostom,  had  been  a  monk  and  presby- 
ter of  Antioch,  and  became  Bishop  of  Constantinople 
by  the  favor  of  the  court.  But  there  the  resemblance 
between  the  two  men  ends.  Nestorius  is  represented 
as  being  more  eloquent  than  wise,  and  a  sentence  he 
addressed  to  the  Emperor  in  one  of  his  sermons  is 
quoted  as  showing  his  temper:  "Aid  me,"  he  said, 
"against  the  heretics,  and  I  will  aid  you  against  the 
Persians;  give  me  earth  cleared  of  heretics,  and  I 
will  give  you  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven."  The  crowd 
applauded,  we  are  told,  but  wise  men  shook  their  heads. 
In  a  short  time  the  hot-headed,  self-opinionated  man 
was  himself  involved  in  the  charge  of  heresy.  Modern 
writers  are  disposed  to  acquit  him  of  an  heretical  in- 
tent or  meaning;  but  I  must  confess  that  after  a  care- 
ful examination  of  what  remains  of  his  own  words,  my 
own  opinion  is  that  Nestorius  was  a  Nestorian  heretic. 
He  objected  to  the  term  Thcotokos  (usually  translated 
Mother  of  God),  as  applied  to  the  blessed  Virgin,  and 
proposed  that  she  be  called  Christotokos  (mother  of 
Christ),  instead.  With  the  remembrance  of  the  Arian 
denial  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ  in  their  minds,  the 
people  took  the  alarm  and  excitement  followed.  For 
Christos  either  includes  Theos  or  excludes  it.  If 
Christos  includes  Theos,  then  she  who  is  Christotokos 
is  Theotokos,  and  Nestorius'  objection  to  the  term  is  un- 


From  Constant ine  to  the  Reformation.        37 

tenable  ;  if,  on  the  contrary,  Christos  excludes  Theos, 
then  Nestorius'  objection  is  tenable  ;  but  only  on  the 
condition  that  the  Son  of  Man  is  not  the  Son  of  God. 
Nestorianism,  therefore,  divides  our  blessed  Lord  into 
two  persons,  and  overthrows  the  Catholic  faith,  which 
teaches  that  He  who  was  with  the  Father  before  all 
worlds,  the  only-begotten  Son  of  God,  is  the  same  per- 
son who  became  man,  of  the  flesh  of  the  Virgin  Mary, 
his  mother,  and  who  as  man  suffered  for  our  salvation. 
St.  Cyril  saw  the  logical  consequence  at  once.  He 
wrote  against  Nestorius,  and  with  oriental  vehemence 
he  issued  twelve  anathemas  against  the  various  expres- 
sions of  the  heresy.  Nestorius  replied  with  twelve 
contrary  anathemas,  and  these  anathemas,  to  my  mind, 
demonstrate  clearly  the  heretical  character  of  their 
author.  The  controversy  became  so  fierce  that  a  Gen- 
eral Council  was  called  at  Ephesus  (A.D.  431)  to  settle 
it,  and  Nestorius  was  condemned.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  go  into  the  details  of  the  history.  The  Council  of 
Ephesus  defined  the  Catholic  faith,  and  upheld  the 
truth  upon  the  point  in  dispute  ;  and  whatever  we  may 
say  of  St.  Cyril  and  his  methods,  we  must  remember 
that  the  Court  was  in  favor  of  Nestorius,  that  the 
Emperor's  commissioners  made  one-sided  reports  of 
what  was  done,  and  so  hindered  St.  Cyril  from  com- 
municating with  his  friends  that  he  was  obliged  to 
conceal  his  letter  in  a  beggar's  staff,  and  that  the 
Patriarch  of  Antioch  was  lukewarm  out  of  personal 
friendship  for  Nestorius.     What  I  want  to  point  out 


38       CJiriste7ido]}i  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


particularly  is  that  the  political  situation,  with  its  effect 
upon  the  jealousy  of  the  hierarchy  and  the  temper  of 
the  people — the  concealed  discontent  at  the  weakness 
and  oppressiveness  of  the  government,  and  the  want 
of  the  power  to  express  that  discontent  in  any  other 
way  than  by  embittering  a  theological  controversy  in 
which  the  government  took  a  side — had  its  influence 
upon  the  proceedings  of  the  Council  of  Ephesus  and 
the  subsequent  history  of  Nestorianism.  It  is  an 
instance  of  what  may  be  called  (without  irreverence,  I 
hope),  the  irony  of  Divine  Providence,  that  the  man 
who  promised  his  aid  against  the  Persians  in  return  for 
imperial  aid  against  the  heretics,  should  have  originated 
a  heresy  which  was  used  by  the  Persians  as  a  weapon 
of  offence  against  the  empire.  Adopted  as  the  badge 
of  nationality  and  disaffection  by  large  numbers  of  the 
Syriac-speaking  peoples  on  the  borders  of  Persia, 
Nestorianism  invited  its  patronage,  and  obtained  its 
toleration,  and  became  the  exclusive  form  of  Chris- 
tianity in  the  regions  beyond  the  eastern  frontier  of 
the  empire. 

Eutychianism  (taking  its  name  from  Eutyches,  a 
monk  of  Constantinople,  and  a  partisan  of  St.  Cyril 
against  Nestorius)  is  the  contrary  error  to  Nestorian- 
ism. The  one  divided  Christ  into  two  persons,  the 
other  denied  the  integrity  of  the  two  natures  of  our 
blessed  Lord,  the  Divine  and  human,  either  dissolving 
the  human  nature  in  the  Divine,  or  blending  the  two 
into  a  mixture  which  is  neither  Divine  nor  human.     Its 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        39 

history  further  illustrates  what  I  have  said,  but  it  had 
peculiar  features,  and  is  marked  with  greater  violence. 
As  Eutyches  was  a  monk  it  was  a  monastic  heresy. 
Now  the  monks,  in  the  political  condition  of  the  East, 
were  the  army  of  the  Church  against  the  imperial 
despotism.  Possessing  the  unbounded  reverence  of  the 
people,  and  willing  to  endure  martyrdom  at  any  time, 
they  were  a  power  of  which  the  government  was 
afraid,  and  the  worst  mistake  which  could  be  made  by 
a  politician  was  to  give  a  monk  by  persecution  or  death 
the  opportunity  of  canonization.  Monasticism  had 
originated  in  Egypt,  and  the  more  fanatical  members 
of  the  monastic  brotherhood  looked  to  the  Patriarch  of 
Alexandria  as  their  chief,  and  were  inclined  to  carry 
the  opposition  of  St.  Cyril  to  Nestorianism  to  the  ex- 
treme limit.  Hence  the  heresy.  Under  the  circum- 
stances the  necessity  of  dealing  with  it  was  a  political 
calamity  of  the  utmost  gravity.  But  the  Church  could 
do  no  otherwise  than  deal  with  it,  I  need  not  go  over 
the  story  of  its  righteous  condemnation  at  the  Council 
of  Chalcedon.  You  can  read  in  Milman  or  Robertson 
about  Eutyches  and  his  partisans,  about  Dioscorus  and 
the  Latrociniiim,  about  Flavian  and  St.  Leo,  about  the 
murder  of  Proterius,  about  Timothy  the  Weazel  and 
Timothy  the  White,  and  Peter  the  Fuller  and  Peter 
the  Hoarse.  My  object  is  to  show  the  connection  of 
ecclesiastical  with  secular  history,  and  how  the  scheme 
of  Constantine  entangled  in  its  meshes  men  who  would 
gladly  have  done  right  if  they  could.     The  emperors 


40       CJiristendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

who  reigned  during  the  Eutychian  excitement  were 
such  men,  and  a  few  words  given  to  each  of  them  will 
not  be  thrown  away. 

It  is  a  proof  of  the  tendency  towards  a  stable  and 
legitimate  government  induced  by  the  reforms  of  Con- 
stantine,  that  on  the  death  of  Theodosius  II.  without 
issue,  Marcian,  the  Thracian,  became  emperor  as  the 
husband  of  Pulcheria,  the  sister  of  the  deceased  sover- 
eign. The  Christian  feeling  of  loyalty  to  the  powers 
that  be,  undoubtedly  assisted  in  securing  his  throne. 
He  was  a  soldier  and  senator  of  mature  age,  and  high 
character.  He  shaped  the  policy  of  the  Council  of 
Chalcedon,  especially  with  regard  to  the  patriarchate 
of  Constantinople  ;  and  while  he  confirmed  the  con- 
demnation of  Eutyches,  he  was  disposed  to  leave  to 
time  and  the  force  of  truth  the  destruction  of  the 
heresy.  He  was  really  more  interested  in  so  organiz- 
ing the  hierarchy  as  to  bring  the  Church  into  subjec- 
tion to  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  and  establish- 
ing the  imperial  authority  through  him,  than  upon 
persecuting  the  heretics.  He  seems  to  have  contented 
himself  with  sending  Eutyches  away  from  Constanti- 
nople, and  banishing  Dioscorus  from  Alexandria.  But 
the  banishment  of  Dioscorus  exasperated  the  monastic 
party,  and  they  immediately  began  to  agitate  through- 
out the  empire  against  the  Council  of  Chalcedon. 
Proterius  had  been  appointed  Patriarch  of  Alexandria 
in  place  of  Dioscorus;  a  Monophysite  (the  Eutychians 
were     called     Monophysites)    named    Timothy,    and 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        41 

nicknamed  the  Weazel,  was  set  up  against  him  ;  a 
Monophysite  monk  seized  the  see  of  Jerusalem  ;  Peter 
the  Fuller,  another  Monophysite,  got  possession  of 
Antioch  ;  and  on  the  death  of  Marcian,  Proterius  was 
barbarously  murdered. 

Leo  the  Elder,  the  next  emperor,  found  the  Church 
in  this  disorder.  He  dealt  with  it  with  prudence  ;  he 
took  the  opinions  of  the  bishops  by  correspondence, 
instead  of  assembling  them  in  council,  and  finding  them 
adverse  to  Timothy  the  Weazel,  he  expelled  him  from 
Alexandria  ;  and  when  he  had  made  himself  acquainted 
with  the  state  of  affairs,  he  put  the  sees  into  the  pos- 
session of  the  orthodox  bishops,  and  succeeded  appar- 
ently in  confining  the  Eutychian  heresy  to  the  mon- 
asteries. 

The  accession  of  Leo  is  another  evidence  of  the 
improvement  of  the  political  condition,  and  of  the 
rising  influence  of  Christian  feeling,  notwithstanding 
the  manifold  evils  in  Church  and  State.  Leo  received 
the  throne,  in  default  of  an  heir  to  Marcian  and 
Pulcheria,  by  the  consent  of  the  army  and  the  senate, 
and  desiring  further  to  confirm  his  title  by  the  sanc- 
tion of  the  Church,  he  was  solemnly  crowned  by  the 
Patriarch  of  Constantinople — the  first  example  of  the 
coronation  of  a  Christian  prince.  All  that  Robertson 
tells  us  of  his  secular  affairs  is  that  he  procured  the 
murder  of  Aspar,  one  of  his  generals,  who  had  advanced 
him  to  the  empire ;  and  so  he  gives  the  most  unfavor- 
able view  of  his  character.     But  it  is  to  be  remembered 


42       C hristendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


not  only  that,  according  to  the  principles  of  the 
government,  the  emperor  had  the  supreme  power  of 
life  and  death,  and  that  his  order  made  an  execution 
legal  without  form  of  trial,  when  reasons  of  state  were 
involved  ;  but  that  Aspar  was  a  barbarian,  and  that 
this  was  the  age  when  the  Huns  under  Attila,  and  the 
Goths  under  Alaric,  Ataulph  and  Theodoric  almost 
destroyed  the  empire  ;  and  Mr.  Finlay  points  out  that 
the  removal  of  Aspar  was  necessary  in  order  to  reform 
the  army,  to  reduce  the  dangerous  power  of  the 
barbarian  mercenaries,  and  to  raise  up  a  native  soldiery, 
which  the  policy  of  preceding  emperors  had  dis- 
couraged. He  remarks  also,  that  Leo's  civil  adminis- 
tration was  conducted  with  great  prudence,  and  that 
he  endeavored  to  lighten  the  burdens  of  his  subjects, 
and  to  improve  their  condition.  His  orthodoxy  as  a 
Churchman,  and  his  prudence  as  a  sovereign  both  con- 
duced to  the  peace  of  the  Church  during  his  reign. 

Leo  was  succeeded,  after  reigning  seventeen  years 
(457-474),  by  his  son-in-law  Zeno,  as  guardian  of  his 
grandson,  who  died  an  infant,  and  Zeno  then  reigned 
as  the  husband  of  Ariadne,  who  could  confer  the 
throne,  though  she  could  not  inherit  it.  His  claim  was 
disputed  by  Basiliscus,  the  brother  of  Leo's  widow, 
and  he  was  driven  out  of  Constantinople.  Basiliscus 
made  a  party  for  himself  by  favoring  the  Eutychians, 
and  the  disputes  broke  out  with  more  violence  than 
before.  But  Acacius,  the  Bishop  of  Constantinople,  an 
astute  and  able  man,  who  seems  either  to  have  had 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.       43 

unbounded  influence  over  Zeno,  or  to  have  been  sin- 
cerely loyal  to  him,  made  use  of  the  orthodox  party 
among  the  monks  to  thwart  the  designs  of  Basiliscus, 
and  in  less  than  two  years  he  was  driven  out,  and  Zeno 
was  restored.  The  people  had  now  been  enlisted  in 
the  quarrel,  and  the  monks  did  all  in  their  power  to 
inflame  them  ;  while  the  emperor  and  the  bishops 
appear  to  have  desired  to  minimize  the  excitement, 
and  to  smoothe  the  way  for  the  return  of  the  Eutych- 
ians,  or  Monophysites  as  they  were  now  called,  to 
the  Church.  Zeno  and  Acacius,  after  a  correspondence 
with  the  bishops,  issued  an  edict  called  the  Hcnoticon, 
or  bond  of  union,  which  affirmed  the  true  doctrine,  but 
did  not  insist  upon  the  acknowledgment  of  the  Council 
of  Chalcedon  ;  and  those  who  accepted  this  were  re- 
ceived to  the  communion  of  the  Church  of  Constanti- 
nople. But  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  to  diminish  the 
credit  of  Constantinople,  immediately  took  up  the 
quarrel,  and  the  monastic  party  on  either  side  refused 
to  concede  anything  ;  and  as  the  result  of  this  attempt 
at  peace,  the  Church  at  the  death  of  Zeno  was  divided 
into  three  great  parties  :  Rome  and  the  West  were 
Chalcedonian,  Constantinople  and  Jerusalem  favored  the 
Henoticon,  and  Alexandria  and  Antioch  were  Monophy- 
site.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  it  was  partisan  slander 
which  represents  Zeno  to  have  been  exceptionally  de- 
praved and  vicious  in  his  private  life.  Finlay  thinks 
that  justice  has  not  been  done  him  as  a  ruler,  remark- 
ing that  the  man  who  successfully  resisted  the  schemes 


44       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

and  the  forces  of  the  great  Theodoric,  could  not  have 
been  a  contemptible  emperor,  even  though  his  ortho- 
doxy was  questionable.  He  adds  that  the  great  work 
of  his  reign,  which  lasted  seventeen  years  and  a  half, 
was  the  formation  of  an  army  of  native  troops  to  serve 
as  a  counterpoise  to  the  barbarian  mercenaries  ;  and 
that  from  his  laws  which  have  been  preserved  in  the 
Justinian  code,  he  seems  to  have  adopted  judicious 
measures  for  alleviating  the  fiscal  obligations  of  the 
landed  proprietors. 

Anastasius,  the  next  emperor,  who  was  a  man  of 
mature  age  and  of  unblemished  life,  and  who  was 
greeted  in  the  theatre  with  the  cry,  *'  Reign  as  you 
have  lived !"  secured  his  title  by  marrying  the  widow  of 
Zeno.  He  was  a  man  fit  to  be  emperor,  and  yet  the 
ill  effects  of  Constantine's  scheme  for  the  union  of 
Church  and  State  clouded  his  reign,  humiliated  him  to 
the  lowest  depth,  and  prevented  a  just  appreciation  of 
his  merits  and  of  the  benefits  he  conferred  upon  the 
empire.  He  exerted  himself  to  reform  the  administra- 
tion, and  to  lighten  the  burdens  of  the  people.  He 
diminished  the  taxes,  and  yet  by  improved  methods  of 
assessing  and  collecting  them  he  increased  the  revenue  ; 
by  judicious  expenditure  he  was  able  to  execute  great 
works  for  the  defence  of  Constantinople,  and  yet  to 
leave  at  his  death  a  surplus  equal  to  about  $70,000,000 
of  our  money  in  the  treasury.  But  unfortunately  the 
only  method  of  reform  which  presents  itself  to  an  able 
despotic  ruler  is  that  of  increased   centralization  ;  and 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        45 

this  conception  of  government  attaches  to  his  relation 
to  the  Church  as  to  all  other  relations.  The  ecclesias- 
tical administration  of  Anastasius,  therefore,  was  a 
complete  failure.  His  Archbishop  of  Constantinople, 
Macedonius,  was  a  weak  man,  pious  and  amiable,  but 
who  had  been  selected  for  his  compliant  disposition, 
to  carry  out  the  policy  of  Zeno  and  the  Henoticon. 
Anastasius  was  occupied  for  several  years  after  his  ac- 
cession with  the  war  against  the  Persians.  On  return- 
ing to  Constantinople  he  found  that  Macedonius  had 
been  gained  over  by  the  orthodox  monastic  party,  and 
that  the  city  was  zealous  for  the  Council  of  Chalcedon. 
Its  zeal  found  vent  in  insults  to  the  Emperor,  and  he 
had  to  be  protected  by  a  guard  of  soldiers  when  he 
appeared  in  public.  In  his  anger  he  imprudently 
showed  favor  to  the  opposite  party.  He  laid  a  trap  for 
Macedonius  by  procuring  his  subscription  to  a  creed 
which  made  no  mention  of  the  Councils  either  of 
Ephesus  or  Chalcedon,  and  then  he  made  it  public. 
The  orthodox  party  thereupon  denounced  Macedonius, 
and  the  Emperor  seized  the  opportunity  to  depose  and 
banish  him.  His  successor  renounced  the  Council  of 
Chalcedon,  and  was  acknowledged  by  the  Patriarchs 
of  Alexandria,  Antioch  and  Jerusalem  ;  so  that  it 
might  seem  as  if  not  only  the  Emperor  but  the  empire 
was  Monophysite.  Political  passion  was  immediately 
aroused.  Constantinople,  which  did  not  take  kindly 
to  the  financial  reforms  and  economical  expenditure  of 
Anastasius,  being  the  place  where  much  of  the  govern- 


46       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

ment's  money  was  expended,  broke  out  into  insurrec- 
tion ;  and  the  Emperor,  who  was  eighty  years  old, 
appeared  in  the  Circus  without  the  insignia  of  royalty, 
and  offered  to  resign  the  throne.  The  tumults  were 
appeased  by  his  humiliation  ;  but  a  Thracian  general, 
Vitalian,  took  advantage  of  the  situation  to  revolt,  and 
marched  upon  Constantinople  with  60,000  men,  pre- 
tending to  have  taken  up  arms  in  defence  of  the 
Council  of  Chalcedon.  The  barbarian  power,  however, 
had  been  curtailed  by  the  military  reforms  of  Leo  and 
Zeno,  and  Vitalian  was  defeated.  Anastasius  died 
emperor ;  but  the  memory  of  his  good  deeds  as  a  civil 
ruler  was  lost  in  the  animosities  fomented  by  his 
unwise  ecclesiastical  policy. 

Notwithstanding  the  religious  ferment,  however, 
the  empire  was  strengthened  by  the  firm  and  prudent 
rule  of  Marcian,  Leo,  Zeno  and  Anastasius,  and  Justin 
and  Justinian  reaped  the  benefits.  Justin  was  severely 
orthodox  ;  he  put  the  episcopal  sees  into  the  hands  of 
adherents  of  the  Council  of  Chalcedon,  and  published 
severe  laws  against  the  heretics,  thus  stifling  the  con- 
troversy about  the  Henoticon.  He  acceded  to  the 
demand  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome  that  the  name  of 
Acacius  be  removed  from  the  diptychs  ;  but  as  an  off- 
set he  permitted  the  Bishop  of  Constantinople  to 
assume  the  title  of  Ecumenical  Patriarch.  The 
heretical  opposition,  however,  was  still  strong  under 
Justinian,  and  he  is  credited  with  the  politic  arrange- 
ment of  putting  himself  at  the  head   of  the  orthodox. 


From  Constantifie  to  the  Reformation.       47 

and  his  wife  Theodora  at  the  head  of  the  Monophysite 
party. 

The  reign  of  Justinian  constitutes  an  epoch  in  the 
history  of  the  Roman  Empire.  In  it  the  scheme  of 
Constantine  culminated  ;  the  power  of  the  emperor 
was  not  only  supreme,  but  was  conceived  of,  not  as 
formerly  under  the  forms  of  the  Roman  Republic,  but 
as  simple,  autocratic  and  self-centred.  The  codifica- 
tion of  the  Roman  law  in  this  reign  is  a  monument  of 
the  legal  learning  and  intellectual  power  which  the 
emperor  could  call  into  his  service  ;  but  it  vests  all 
authority  in  the  person  of  the  sovereign,  and  has  been 
studied  in  modern  times  in  the  interests  of  despotism, 
as  well  as  in  the  interests  of  justice.  The  emperor  had 
become  a  civil  ruler,  who  directed  all  the  operations  of 
government  in  every  department,  and  whose  throne 
was  hereditary  when  there  were  heirs,  and  elective 
when  there  were  not.  The  army  was  kept  in  subordi- 
nation by  a  distribution  of  commands  which  prevented 
its  concentration  under  any  one  leader.  The  bar- 
barian dismemberment  of  the  empire  was  checked,  and 
its  inherent  vitality  enabled  it  to  absorb  the  tribes 
which  colonized  its  waste  places  ;  while  the  victories 
of  Belisarius  and  Narses  extinguished  the  kingdoms  of 
the  Vandals  in  Africa,  and  of  the  Goths  in  Italy.  The 
finances  were  administered  with  a  rapacity  which 
treated  all  the  possessions  of  the  people  as  the  property 
of  the  emperor  ;  even  the  revenues  of  the  municipalities 
were   confiscated  to   the   public  treasury.     It  is  not  to 


48       Christendo7n  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

be  thought  that  a  sovereign  so  autocratic  in  all  other 
respects  could  refrain  from  the  attempt  to  dominate 
the  Church  ;  the  determination  of  Justinian  to  make 
himself  supreme  in  ecclesiastical  affairs  is  quite  as 
apparent  as  his  wish  to  heal  the  religious  dissensions 
by  the  ever-alluring  and  ever-deceptive  expedient  of 
compromise.  This  is  the  secret  of  his  dealings  with 
the  Bishop  of  Rome  after  the  reconquest  of  Italy,  and 
of  the  frivolous  question  of  the  "Three  Chapters  "  so- 
called,  to  determine  which  he  assembled  the  Fifth 
General  Council.  The  proceedings  of  that  council 
were,  in  truth,  a  diplomatic  struggle  with  the  emperor, 
in  which  the  Church  evaded  the  snare  that  had  been 
laid  for  her  ;  and  although  some  of  its  canons  are  of 
first-rate  importance  in  the  theology  of  the  Incarna- 
tion, yet  as  regards  the  main  subject  for  which  it  was 
convened,  we  may  well  acquiesce  in  the  judgment  of 
the  learned  French  Catholic  Dupin,  that  the  Church 
was  thrown  into  a  wonderful  confusion  for  a  matter  of 
very  small  consequence. 

The  net  result,  at  the  end  of  Justinian's  reign,  of 
Constantine's  scheme  for  the  union  of  Church  and 
State,  and  for  making  the  unity  of  the  Church  a  support 
of  the  unity  of  the  Empire,  by  a  lax  creed  and  an 
administrative  subjection  to  the  emperor,  may  be 
calculated  with  considerable  accuracy.  The  fact  was, 
that  before  the  close  of  the  sixth  century,  the  nations 
and  races,  which  were  oppressed  by  or  hostile  to  the 
empire,  adopted  heresy  as  their  national  religion  ;  and 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.       49 

the  Universal  Church,  so  far  as  it  was  orthodox  in  the 
faith,  was  practically  limited  to  those  peoples  whose 
speech  was  Latin  or  Greek,  and  who  therefore  furnished 
the  officials  of  the  administration.  This  tendency 
began  to  show  itself  at  the  first  appearance  of  Con- 
stantine in  the  affairs  of  the  Church.  After  the 
Council  of  Aries  in  the  year  313,  where  the  Donatist 
schism  was  treated  of  under  his  superintendence,  and 
the  decision  was  confirmed  by  his  authority,  the  dis- 
contented and  down-trodden  remnants  of  the  old 
Punic  population  of  North-western  Africa  made  the 
cause  of  the  Donatists  their  own,  and  pillaged  and 
murdered  for  the  glory  of  God  and  the  purity  of  the 
Church — the  first  Puritans  in  name,  as  well  as  in 
nature.  The  Goths  and  Vandals  adopted  Arianism  to 
preserve  themselves  as  a  pure  race,  to  prevent  absorp- 
tion into  the  empire,  and  to  furnish  a  pretext  for  such 
insubordination  or  aggression  as  might  be  to  their 
advantage.  Nestorianism  was  favored  in  Persia,  be- 
cause it  was  under  the  ban  of  the  empire.  The  Syriac- 
speaking  inhabitants  of  the  East  were  either  Nestorian 
or  Monophysite  ;  the  Copts  in  Egypt  and  the  Abyssin- 
ians  were  Monophysites,  while  the  orthodox  among 
them  were  called  Melchites  or  Royalists.  In  the  year 
596,  the  Armenian  Church,  being  under  the  Persian 
yoke,  and  finding  conformity  to  the  Church  of  the 
empire  to  be  a  political  disadvantage,  as  exposing  its 
members  to  persecution    for   disloyalty,    formally   re- 


50      C hri'steiidom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

nounced  the  Council  of  Chalcedon,  and  is  classed  to 
this  day  amonfj  the  Monophysite  Churches. 

The  terrible  effects  of  this  disruption  of  the  Church 
were  fully  evident  in  the  political  sphere  when  the 
tremendous  energy  of  Mohammedanism  threw  itself 
upon  the  empire.  The  hosts  of  the  false  prophet  could 
never  have  made  their  inroads  upon  Eastern  Chris- 
tendom, had  the  population  been  loyal  to  the  govern- 
ment, and  filled  with  the  spirit  of  patriotism  as  well  as 
animated  with  a  zeal  for  true  religion.  As  it  was,  the 
religious  dissensions  increased  the  disloyalty  and  in- 
difference which  the  government  had  generated  by  its 
oppressive  and  rapacious  tyranny.  And  the  misfortune 
was,  that  the  religious  differences  masked  the  real  cause 
of  the  disaffection,  and  led  emperors  who  were  really 
desirous  of  the  good  of  their  people  away  from  the  re- 
forms which  might  have  bettered  their  condition  and 
assured  their  loyalty,  into  further  repetitions  of  the 
abortive  attempts  to  heal  the  breach  by  political 
theology.  The  disloyalty  seemed  to  be  based  upon 
religious  disaffection,  whereas  in  reality  it  caused  that 
disaffection  ;  and  therefore,  as  the  physician  was  wrong 
in  his  diagnosis,  he  could  not  be  right  in  the  remedy 
proposed.  It  is  no  wonder  that  Heraclius,  after  the 
Persians  had  overrun  the  East  as  far  as  Egypt,  and 
when  the  Mohammedan  cloud  began  to  loom  upon  the 
horizon,  should  make  another  effort  at  compromise.  A 
great  soldier  may  be  pardoned  if  he  does  not  see  the 
bearings  of  a  theological  proposition  ;  but  all  the  same 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        51 

the  Church  would  have  been  false  to  the  trust  com- 
mitted to  her,  had  she  not  branded  the  Monothelite 
heresy.  Heraclius  was  a  great  general  and  a  great 
emperor  ;  but  his  theological  blunder  very  sensibly  in- 
creased the  difficulties  of  his  later  years.  The  con- 
troversy raised  by  it  was  not  brought  to  an  end  for 
half  a  century.  In  the  Sixth  General  Council,  Mon- 
othelitism  was  condemned,  and  its  condemnation 
involved  that  of  Pope  Honorius  who  favored  it. 

The  Iconoclastic  controversy  would  furnish  other 
facts  illustrative  of  the  position  taken  in  this  lecture, 
but  I  cannot  go  into  it  at  length.  Image-worship 
itself  was  Eastern  rather  than  Western,  and  monastic 
rather  than  clerical.  It  took  its  rise  from  the  political 
custom  of  showing  outward  reverence  to  the  standards 
of  the  army,  and  the  statues  of  the  emperor.  If  it  is 
right  to  salute  the  national  flag,  it  is  right  to  salute 
also  the  symbol  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  ;  if  it  is  right 
to  do  reverence  to  the  image  of  the  sovereign,  it  is  cer- 
tainly no  less  right  to  do  reverence  to  the  image  of  the 
Saviour.  That  was  the  whole  question.  In  times  of 
politico-religious  excitement,  such  reverence  shown  on 
the  one  side,  denied  on  the  other,  would  be  the  badge 
of  party,  and  the  symbol  of  disaffection.  The  attempt 
to  put  down  the  use  and  cultus  of  images  of  the  Saviour 
and  the  saints  was  suggested  by  the  Mohammedan 
wars  ;  and  the  whole  miserable  history  shows  how 
both  parties  were  entangled  in  the  net  of  Constantine's 
devising.     But  I  cannot  enlarge  upon  this.     I  must  ask 


5  2      Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

your  attention  for  a  few  minutes  longer,  whilst  I 
attempt  to  sum  up,  as  briefly  as  I  can,  the  moral  effect 
of  the  union  of  Church  and  State  in  the  Eastern 
Empire,  during  the  period  of  which  I  have  taken  a 
rapid  review,  upon  the  clergy  and  the  laity  of  the 
Church — that  is,  upon  practical  Christianity. 

First  upon  the  clergy,  and  especially  upon  the 
bishops.  The  union  of  Church  and  State  imposed  upon 
the  bishops  many  secular  cares,  and  mixed  them  up 
with  the  politics  of  the  government.  It  is  plain  that 
when  religion  is  made  an  affair  of  state,  it  is  the  duty 
of  prelates  to  be  statesmen,  and  it  may  be  their  tempta- 
tion to  be  demagogues.  If  St.  Gregory  Nazianzen,  St. 
Chrysostom  and  St.  Augustine  were  great  saints,  as 
they  were,  we  must  remember  that  neither  St.  Gregory 
nor  St.  Chrysostom  were  capable  of  ruling  Constanti- 
nople, and  that  St.  Augustine's  episcopal  see  was  a 
small  town  in  Africa.  St.  Athanasius,  St.  Basil,  St. 
Ambrose,  Innocent  I.  and  St.  Leo  were  men  of  a 
different  stamp,  and  had  a  different  part  to  play  ;  and 
Theophilus  and  Cyril  and  Dioscorus  of  Alexandria  were 
men  of  a  different  stamp  still.  That  Theophilus  and 
Dioscorus  were  more  fit  for  nobles  of  the  empire  than 
for  prelates  of  the  Church,  their  history  manifests  ;  and 
that  the  fair  fame  of  St.  Cyril  is  tarnished  with  political 
intrigue  and  demagogic  violence  cannot  be  denied. 
But  there  are  no  nobler  nor  greater  men  to  be  found 
anywhere  than  the  class  to  which  St.  Athanasius,  St. 
Basil,  St.  Ambrose  and  St.  Leo  belong.     And  as  re- 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.       53 

gards  the  lesser  men,  and  the  men  in  lower  stations,  it 
is  true  that  the  power  came  to  them  and  was  not 
sought  by  them  ;  it  came  to  them  because  they  were 
the  only  men  who  were  able  to  exercise  it  in  the 
general  decline  of  society  under  the  oppression  of  the 
government.  The  office  and  the  power  from  which 
others  shrank  devolved  upon  them,  and  the  population 
was  saved  from  utter  barbarism  by  the  powerful  influ- 
ence of  the  Church.  The  bishop,  as  the  defender  of 
the  curia  and  the  real  head  of  the  people  in  the 
municipality,  enjoyed  extensive  authority  over  the 
municipal  corporations  and  the  mass  of  the  laboring 
population,  gradually  acquiring  the  power  of  a  civil 
governor,  the  curia  being  his  senate.*  As  the  leaders 
of  the  people  and  the  defenders  of  the  Church,  the 
clergy  stood  between  the  people  and  the  government  ; 
and  if  at  times  they  became  subservient,  and  at  times 
yielded  to  the  temptation  to  become  demagogues,  we 
must  remember  that  their  circumstances  were  more 
difficult  than  any  we  are  familiar  with,  and  that  the 
evils  which  affected  the  Church  had  their  origin  in  the 
State.  Our  respect  for  the  Churchmen  of  the  East  is 
vastly  increased  when  we  compare  them  with  the 
Bishops  of  Rome  as  subjects  of  the  Eastern  Emperor. 
It  was  easy  for  the  Bishop  of  Rome  to  pose  as  the 
Church's  champion  when  he  was  under  the  protection 
of  the  Western  Emperor  or  the  Gothic  King.     But  the 

*  Finlay,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  243-4,  Vol.  II.,  p.  25.     I  ana 
indebted  to  Mr.  Finlay's  volumes  all  through  this  lecture. 


54       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

feeble  resistance  of  Liberius  to  Constantius,  of  Vigilius 
to  Justinian,  of  Honorius  to  Hcraclius,  and  the  treat- 
ment of  Martin  by  Constans  II.  show  us  against  what 
odds  the  Church  of  the  East  contended  for  the  faith 
once  delivered  to  the  saints. 

As  to  the  effect  upon  the  people.  The  adhesion  of 
Constantine  to  Christianity  undoubtedly  made  the 
Christian  religion  fashionable,  so  to  speak,  and  induced 
many  to  an  external  conformity,  and  a  professed 
interest  in  Church  affairs,  which  was  not  accompanied 
with  a  sincere  desire  to  lead  the  Christian  life.  As 
time  went  on,  the  influence  of  the  Church  upon  such 
persons  and  their  descendants  would  at  least  improve 
their  morals,  and  create  such  an  opinion  in  favor  of 
religious  truth  and  right  conduct  as  would  and  did 
react  upon  society  for  its  improvement.  But  that 
improvement,  and  the  real  religious  feeling  of  the 
people  is  not  the  matter  of  which  ecclesiastical  history 
is  made.  It  is  quiet  and  retiring  and  domestic,  and 
does  not  appear  upon  the  surface.  History,  as  usually 
written,  is  after  all  like  our  daily  newspapers,  in  which 
crime  and  immorality  and  the  abnormal  take  up  too 
much  space,  and  the  quiet,  orderly  life  of  the  millions  is 
unnoticed.  In  the  conflicts  with  heresy,  and  the 
stormy  scenes  of  politico-ecclesiastical  commotion,  the 
turbulent  spirits  make  the  noise,  and  the  sincerely 
religious,  who  live  by  their  faith,  and  who  constitute 
the  real  strength  of  the  Church,  are  little  seen  or 
heard  of 


From  Cotistaiitine  to  I  he  Reforinatioii.        55 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  the  reserved  rights  of 
the  Church  in  matters  of  faith  and  doctrine,  for  which 
she  had  successfully  contended  throughout  the  Arian 
period,  gave  occasion  to  every  discontented  element  in 
the  body  politic  to  assert  itself  whenever  a  theological 
question  arose.  Paradoxical  as  the  assertion  may  seem 
to  those  who  take  a  superficial  view,  theology  was  the 
only  subject  of  general  interest  in  which  thought  was 
free — in  which  there  existed  the  constitutional  right  of 
opposition  to  the  party  in  power.  The  outcome  of  the 
Councils  of  Nicasa  and  Constantinople  was  that  the 
emperors  were  compelled  to  acknowledge  the  right  of 
the  Church  herself  to  declare  what  her  doctrine  is  ;  and 
this  acknowledgment  constituted  her  the  only  bulwark 
of  free  thought  against  the  despotic  power  of  the  gov- 
ernment. In  the  absence  of  a  political  public  opinion, 
which  was  impossible  because  the  people  had  no  real 
influence  in  the  government,  all  the  political  animosities 
and  discontents  of  the  people  turned  themselves  into 
the  channel  of  theological  discussion  ;  and  it  is  a  suffi- 
cient explanation  of  the  acrimony  of  dispute,  of  the 
universal  interest  in  the  conflicts  with  the  Nestorian, 
the  Eutychian  and  the  Monothelite  heresies,  and  par- 
ticularly in  the  Iconoclastic  controversy,  and  of  the 
turbulent  commotions  which  accompanied  them,  and 
the  scenes  of  violence  which  disgraced  them,  that  they 
furnished  the  outlet  for  the  pent-up  political  passion  of 
those  who  cared  less  for  Christian  truth  than  for  some 
safe  way  of  showing  opposition  to  the  government. 


56       CJiristendo7}t  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Earnestness  and  zeal  for  the  truth  is  one  thing,  political 
passion  is  another  ;  and  yet  they  may  be  mistaken,  the 
one  for  the  other.  The  odium  tJieologicuvi  is  not  a 
religious,  but  a  politico-religious  temper  ;  and  the 
change  of  temper  apparent  in  religious  controversy  after 
the  union  of  Church  and  State,  not  only  among  the 
ecclesiastics,  but  also  among  the  people,  was  due  to  the 
political  interests  involved,  and  the  political  passions 
aroused,  and  cannot  fairly  be  charged  upon  the  Church 
— against  which  no  such  accusation  can  be  sustained 
from  the  records  of  primitive  Christianity,  when  zeal  for 
the  faith  was  just  as  strong,  and  the  conflict  with  heresy 
as  strenuous.  The  Church  furnished  the  only  means  of 
a  constitutional  opposition  in  the  body  politic.  We  all 
know  how,  under  a  free  political  constitution,  the  rights 
of  the  opposition  are  secured  in  Congress  or  in  Parlia- 
ment, and  the  value  to  the  commonwealth  of  the  party 
out  of  power,  in  holding  the  party  in  power  to  its 
responsibility.  No  such  political  rights  existed  in  the 
empire  ;  and  therefore  all  the  passion  and  contention 
which  in  our  system  find  a  safe  outlet  in  the  recurring 
elections,  spent  themselves  under  the  emperors  in  theo- 
logical disputation,  and  occasionally  in  riot  and  murder 
for  the  sake  of  religion.  This  condition  was  hurtful 
both  to  the  State  and  to  the  Church,  and  gives  the 
enemies  of  religion  occasion  to  blaspheme.  While  it 
tempted  the  clergy  to  insist  upon  coercion  as  a  means 
to  unity,  it  drew  into  the  contest  all  the  turbulent  ele- 
ments of  society.     When  the  emperor  was  orthodox, 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        5  7 

the  malcontents  upheld  the  heresy  ;  when  the  emperor 
favored  the  heretics,  they  were  moved  to  clamor  the 
grievances  of  the  orthodox  ;  and  in  consequence,  the 
imperial  policy,  instead  of  using  Christianity  to  sustain 
the  throne  by  appealing  to  an  enlightened  and  generous 
loyalty,  wrought  dissension,  stereotyped  differences, 
and  was  a  powerful  factor  in  the  breaking  up  of  the 
empire. 

And  yet  this  very  condition  of  politico-ecclesiastical 
ferment  was  the  working  of  the  leaven  in  the  three 
measures  of  meal  according  to  our  Lord's  parable.  It 
intensified  the  universal  interest  in  Church  affairs,  and 
indirectly  helped  forward  the  growth  of  the  better  life 
among  the  mass  of  the  people.  It  was  better  than  the 
religious  indifference  which  accompanies  the  cessation 
of  religious  controversy  at  the  present  day.  The  actual 
Church  in  any  age  falls  far  short  of  the  perfection  of  the 
ideal  Church,  which  is  for  all  ages — for  time  and  for 
eternity.  But  it  may  be  that  the  actual  Church,  with 
all  its  imperfection,  is  doing  its  work  better  in  that  age 
and  under  those  conditions  which  exist,  than  the  ideal 
Church,  could  it  have  been  realized,  would  have  done. 
The  Church  is  a  field  in  which  tares  grow  with  the 
wheat  ;  it  is  a  net  which  draws  fish  of  every  kind,  both 
bad  and  good  ;  it  is  a  leaven  which  by  its  fermentation 
leavens  the  whole  lump.  This  may  be  our  comfort 
under  the  difficulties  of  the  present  day — under  our 
impatient  sense  of  the  want  of  ideal  perfection  in  the 
Church  as  it  now  exists  ;  as  well  as  our  light  in  reading 


58       Christendom,  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

the  Church  history  of  the  past.  As  regards  the  Byzan- 
tine Church,  with  which  we  have  had  to  do  in  this 
lecture,  it  is  the  testimony  of  a  writer  who  has  no 
theological  bias,  that  the  moral  condition  of  the  Byzan- 
tine Empire  in  the  ninth  century  was  superior  to  that 
of  any  equal  number  of  the  human  race  in  any  preceding 
period  of  the  world's  history  ;  and  that  the  superior 
moral  tone  of  society  was  the  conservative  principle 
which  prolonged  its  existence  to  so  late  a  period,  not- 
withstanding its  manifold  defects.*  That  moral  superi- 
ority must  be  attributed  to  the  influence  of  the  Church 
upon  the  people  ;  for  there  was  no  other  power  which 
could  have  evolved  that  result  out  of  the  unclean 
heathenism  to  which  it  succeeded. 

*  Finlay,  Byzantine  Empire,     p.  258. 


IL 
THE  ROMAN   REACTION. 


II. 

THE  ROMAN  REACTION. 


I  have  in  this  lecture  to  invite  your  attention  to  the 
history  of  the  principal  see  of  Western  Europe  during 
the  time  covered  by  the  last  lecture,  and  to  show  you 
how  the  same  causes  which  threw  the  East  into  disorder 
acted,  in  a  different  way,  but  with  as  great  potency,  in 
promoting  the  aggrandizement  of  the  see  of  Rome,  and 
contributing  to  the  rise  of  that  political  and  ecclesias- 
tical power  which  ultimately  became  the  Papacy.  My 
object  in  this  lecture  is  not  controversial,  but  historical  ; 
because  I  believe  that  to  set  forth  the  facts  of  history 
as  I  have  read  them  and  understand  them,  and  to  point 
out  their  bearings  upon  the  development  as  it  gradually 
unfolded,  is  a  sufficient  argument  on  any  points  of 
controversy  that  may  suggest  themselves. 

It  was  a  long  journey  from  Nicaea  to  Canossa — from 
Constantine's  invitation  of  Bishop  Sylvester  in  325  to 
the  Nicene  Council,  to  the  deposition  of  Henry  IV.  of 
Germany  by  Pope  Gregory  VII.  in  1076  ;  and  the  foot- 
prints of  the  travellers  are  not  washed  out  from  the 
sands  of  time.  Their  monuments  remain  by  the  way- 
side to  mark  the  path  they  trod  ;    and  we  may  learn 


62       Christendoi7t  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

from  the  footprints  and  the  monuments,  what  was  their 
condition  at  the  various  stages  of  the  journey. 

I  pointed  out  in  the  previous  lecture,  how,  and  under 
what  influences,  the  hierarchy  of  the  imperialist  Church 
was  built  up  as  a  pyramid,  in  narrowing"  stages,  until  it 
remained  only  to  crown  the  whole  with  a  single  head. 
Beginning  with  the  laity  as  the  foundation,  there  rose 
in  ranks  above  them,  first  the  priesthood,  then  the 
bishops,  above  them  the  Metropolitans,  ascending 
higher  the  Exarchs  or  primates,  over  them  the 
Patriarchs.  Who  should  be  seated  at  the  summit, 
supreme  in  power  and  dignity  over  the  whole  .-*  In 
this  question  is  contained  the  whole  long  struggle  of 
Imperialism  and  Papalism.  Given  the  determination 
of  the  head  of  the  State  to  make  himself  also  the  head 
of  the  Church,  there  arises  immediately  the  spirit  of 
reaction,  which  erects  a  head  of  the  Church  (that  is 
a  head  on  earth,  Christ  Himself  being  the  true  Head  of 
the  Church)  to  oppose  the  usurpation  of  the  State. 
The  theory  that  the  head  of  the  State  is,  ex  officio  the 
head  of  the  Church  is  Imperialism — I  named  it  Byzan- 
tinism  in  the  title  of  the  last  lecture  ;  the  theory  that 
there  must  be  an  earthly,  visible  head  of  the  Church,  to 
govern  both  Church  and  State,  is  Papalism.  The  one 
theory  produced  the  other,  and  the  resistance  to  the 
one  was  the  means  of  the  success  of  the  other.  But 
inasmuch  as  neither  Imperialism  nor  Papalism  is  a  part 
of  the  Divine  Order  and  Constitution  of  the  Church, 
neither  can   be  successful  in   establishing  a  complete 


From  Const antine  to  the  RcfoTination.        6 


v) 


and  ecumenical  jurisdiction.  Imperialism  became  domi- 
nant in  the  East,  and  Papalism  in  the  West  ;  and  the 
result  was  the  Great  Schism  of  Christendom,  never  to 
be  healed  until  Church  and  State  are  disunited  through- 
out the  length  and  breadth  of  the  world,  as  they  are  in 
the  United  States  to-day. 

Here,  however,  I  desire  to  interpose  a  remark  by  way 
of  caution.  In  reviewing  the  history  of  a  thousand 
years,  including  what  are  called  the  dark  ages,  we  are 
called  upon  to  take  note  of  many  things  which  seem 
to  us  to  be  corruptions  in  the  Church.  But  in  judging 
of  them,  we  must  remember  that  there  is  a  variable  as 
well  as  an  invariable  element  in  the  organization  of  the 
Church,  to  enable  it  to  adapt  itself  to  the  circumstances 
of  a  various  and  changing  world  ;  and  that  some  adap- 
tations which  would  really  be  corruptions  among  us, 
worked  well  in  other  and  very  different  times.  More- 
over (and  this  is  another  consideration),  a  disturbing 
element  having  been  introduced  into  the  administration 
of  ecclesiastical  affairs,  through  the  union  of  Church 
and  State,  it  was  impossible  that  the  external  history 
of  the  Church  should  not  show  its  influence.  Men 
with  the  best  intentions,  working  under  the  actual 
conditions,  and  endeavoring  to  act  for  the  best,  added 
to  the  evils  they  attempted  to  remedy,  and  increased 
disorders  which  they  desired  to  check.  Instances  of 
this  have  been  seen  in  the  previous  lecture.  It  is  a 
part  of  the  same  truth  that  measures  looking  to  the 
reformation  of   manifest  evils,  attempts  to   adapt   the 


64       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

working  of  the  Church  to  the  exigencies  of  the  times, 
changes  of  theory  to  meet  practical  difficulties,  expe- 
dients honestly  intended  to  remove  confessed  and 
palpable  corruptions,  have  themselves  become  sources 
of  corruption  after  they  have  outlived  their  term  ;  and 
it  is  shown  in  many  examples,  that  the  laudable  effort 
of  one  age,  has  itself  become  a  corruption  in  a  succeed- 
ing age.  Now  it  is  a  cheap  and  easy  way  of  accounting 
for  these  phenomena,  to  attribute  them  to  the  corrup- 
tion of  the  men  themselves,  to  the  ambition  of  prelates, 
to  the  ignorance  and  superstition  of  the  priesthood,  to 
the  unbelief  and  hypocrisy  of  those  who  professed  the 
faith  in  Christ.  The  temptation,  so  to  explain  them,  is 
very  great  on  the  part  of  those  who  have  broken  with 
the  historic  continuity  of  the  Church  of  Christ  ;  they 
are  interested  in  having  it  so,  to  justify  themselves  in 
schism.  But  I  believe  that  these  explanations  are  for 
the  most  part  not  only  false  in  themselves,  but  fatal  to 
a  true  historical  method.  We  shall  better  get  at  the 
facts  of  history  by  looking  for  the  good  in  men,  than 
for  the  bad  in  them.  Believing,  as  I  do,  that  the 
Papacy  in  its  historical  development  is  a  falsehood  in 
theory,  and  a  corruption  in  fact,  I  can  yet  see  that 
the  men  who  contributed  most  to  the  formation  of  the 
theory  and  the  working  out  of  the  fact  were,  in  their 
measure,  sincere,  earnest,  able  men,  righteously  indig- 
nant at  sins  they  sought  the  power  to  punish,  and  at 
corruptions  they  believed  themselves  commissioned  to 
reform.     I  believe  that  God  rules  His  Church,  and  has 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.       65 

enabled  it  to  do  its  work  in  the  souls  of  men  under  the 
most  various  and  apparently  hopeless  circumstances  ; 
and  that  Christ  is  in  His  Church  to  sustain  the  faithful 
in  one  age  as  much  as  in  another.  I  believe,  however, 
that  any  tampering  with  the  Divinely  constituted  order 
of  the  Church  leads  to  practical  evils  which  are  only 
palliated  by  human  expedients,  however  sincere  and 
well-meant,  and  that  these  can  be  reformed  only  by  a 
return  to  that  Divinely  constituted  order.  And  it  is 
with  these  beliefs  that  I  purpose  to  comment  on  the 
history  to  which  I  have  now  to  call  your  attention. 

I  touched  briefly  in  the  last  lecture  upon  two  or  three 
points  in  the  polity  of  the  primitive  Church,  upon  which 
I  must  here  say  a  few  more  words. 

I. — In  the  ante-Nicene  period  there  was  no  such 
hierarchy  of  Archbishops,  Exarchs,  Primates,  and 
Patriarchs,  above  the  Bishops  of  the  Apostolic  Suc- 
cession as  was  developed  in  the  course  of  events 
already  noticed.  The  rule  was  that  of  the  35th 
Apostolical  Canon:  "The  bishops  of  every  country 
ought  to  know  who  is  the  chief  among  them,  and  to 
esteem  him  as  their  head,  and  not  to  do  any  great 
thing  without  his  consent  ;  but  every  one  should 
manage  only  the  affairs  that  belong  to  his  own  parish,  * 
and  the  places  subject  to  it.  But  let  him  (/.  e.,  the 
chief)  not  do  anything  without  the  consent  of  all  ;  for 
by  this  means  there  will  be  unanimity,  and  God  will  be 

*  Parish  at  this  time  meant  what  we  mean  by  Diocese. 
5 


66       Christendoin  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

glorified  by  Christ  in  the  Holy  Spirit."  The  national, 
or  in  the  early  Roman  Empire,  the  provincial  Church 
had  its  chief  bishop,  but  he  was  only  a  bishop  (  and  the 
Pope  of  Rome  to  this  day  is  nothing  more)  ;  and  he 
was  not  in  all  cases  a  Metropolitan.  Three  apparent 
exceptions  to  this  rule  are  only  exceptions  in  regard 
to  the  extent  of  the  jurisdiction,  not  in  regard  to 
its  nature.  The  Bishops  of  Rome,  Alexandria  and 
Antioch  had  larger  territories  than  the  rest  ;  but  their 
a_uthority  in  them  was  only  that  of  the  Apostolical 
canon,  *  and  their  subsequent  development  into  the 
great  patriarchates  followed  the  course  traced  in  the 
last  lecture. 

2. — The  second  point  is,  the  completeness  of  the 
system  under  which,  without  a  visible  head,  under  the 
headship  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  whole  Church 
universal  was  bound  together  in  visible  unity,  in  the 
one  faith,  the  one  discipline,  and  the  one  order. 
Throughout  the  Church  there  were  continually  passing 
and  repassing,  duly  accredited  messengers  of  the 
clergy,  bearing  to  the  "  chiefs "  of  each  nation  or 
province,  letters  written  in  an  official  manner — litercB 
formatce — conveying  intelligence  of  what  was  done  in 
the  provinces  from  which  they  were  sent ;  and,  if  the 
affair  were  of  sufficient  importance,  or  of  general  in- 
terest, asking  the  concurrence  of  the  churches,  or 
presenting    a    case    for    adjudication    by   the    Church 

*See  my  article  in  the  Church  Review  for  April,  1874. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        67 

Catholic.  By  means  of  these  litcne  forniatcB  duly 
received  and  preserved  in  the  archives  of  the  Churches, 
accurate  information  was  everywhere  obtainable  of  the 
condition  and  history  of  the  whole  Catholic  com- 
munion ;  we  cannot  open  the  Ecclesiastical  History  of 
Eusebius  anywhere  without  seeing  the  use  he  made  of 
them.  By  this  means,  also,  the  division  was  made 
between  those  who  continued  in  the  Church's  unity, 
and  those  who  broke  it  by  schism  or  heresy.  To  give 
or  withhold  these  letters,  to  receive  or  refuse  them 
was  the  test  of  Catholic  communion,  and  the  suf^cient 
means  by  which  the  authority  of  the  Catholic  whole 
was  brought  to  bear  upon  the  local  church  to  reclaim 
the  erring,  or  to  cut  off  the  contumacious.  The  rule 
was  stated  by  St,  Basil  in  a  letter  to  the  Bishops  of 
Pontus,  who  had  been  set  against  him  :  "  The  fair 
thing,"  he  says,  "  would  be  to  judge  of  me,  not  from 
one  or  two  who  do  not  walk  uprightly  in  the  truth,  but 
from  the  multitude  of  bishops  throughout  the  world 
connected  with  me  through  the  grace  of  the  Lord. 
Make  inquiry  of  Pisidians,  Lycaonians,  Isaurians, 
Phrygians  of  both  provinces,  Armenians  your  neigh- 
bors, Macedonians,  Achaians,  Illyrians,  Gauls,  Span- 
iards, the  whole  of  Italy,  Sicilians,  Africans,  the  healthy 
part  of  Egypt,  whatever  is  left  of  Syria  ;  all  of  whom 
send  letters  to  me,  and  in  turn  receive  them  from  me. 
From  the  letters  they  send  hither,  and  from  those  sent 
back  to  them,  you  may  learn  that  we  are  of  one  spirit, 
of  one  mind.     Whoso,  then,  shuns  communion  with  me. 


68       Christendoni  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

it  cannot  escape  your  accuracy,  cuts  himself  off  from 
the  Catholic  Church."* 

3. — The  third  point  is,  the  efficacy  of  this  system  for 
the  termination  of  controversies,  the  definition  of 
doctrine  and  the  adjudication  of  cases  appealed  from 
any  portion  of  the  Church,  by  a  truly  ecumenical 
decision.  By  these  means  a  judgment  of  the  Catholic 
Church  upon  any  matter  was  arrived  at  as  fully  and  as 
accurately  as  by  the  assembly  of  a  general  council  in 
later  times  ;  for  example,  on  the  Quartodeciman  con- 
troversy, the  Montanist  heresy,  or  the  Novatian  schism. 
The  assembly  of  the  bishops  in  the  national  or  provin- 
cial councils  was  thus  given,  so  to  speak,  an  ecumenical 
character  ;  their  communications  with  one  another 
enabled  them  to  collect  at  any  place  the  concurrence 
of  local  decisions  for  a  final  settlement  of  a  question 
which  had  arisen. 

Now  had  there  been  no  union  of  Church  and  State, 
there  would  have  been,  I  believe,  no  need  of  any  other 
polity  for  the  Church  than  this  of  the  ante-Nicene 
period.  But  when  the  emperor  began  to  exert  his 
power  and  influence  in  Church  affairs,  this  primitive 
system  broke  down  and  new  adjustments  were  neces- 
sary. When  heretics  or  favorers  of  heretics  were 
assisted  in  gaining  possession  of  the  Episcopal  sees, 
and  sustained  in  them  by  the  imperial  authority  ;  when 
orthodox  bishops  were  driven  out  by  the  military  arm, 

*  Sl.  Basil  Ep.  204.     Could  the  Bishop  of  Rome  say  more  ? 


From  Constaiitine  to  the  Reformation.        69 

and  unjust  sentences  of  deposition  were  issued  against 
such  men  as  St.  Athanasius  by  packed  and  partisan 
councils  ;  and  when  time-serving  or  timid  men  were 
wiUing  to  hold  communion  with  Catholics  on  the  one 
side,  and  with  heretics  on  the  other,  it  ceased  to  be 
possible  to  obtain  a  Catholic  exposition  of  doctrine,  or 
to  decide  an  appeal  for  right  and  justice  by  the  means 
previously  found  sufficient.  Two  principal  modifica- 
tions of  the  ecclesiastical  polity  were  necessary  to 
meet  the  requirements  of  the  situation. 

I. — The  first  was  an  instrument  for  settling  con- 
troversies upon  doctrine  as  they  arose.  The  assembling 
the  Council  of  Nicaea  by  Constantine  established  the 
precedent,  and  the  failure  of  the  attempt  to  set  it  aside 
in  the  interests  of  Arianism  or  Latitudinarianism  formu- 
lated the  theory  of  a  General  or  Ecumenical  Council, 
as  such  an  instrument.  An  Ecumenical  Council  is  in 
theory  an  assembly  of  the  bishops  of  the  whole  Church, 
brought  together  to  bear  witness  to  the  truth  as 
originally  revealed  to,  and  continuously  held  in  the 
whole  Church ;  and  having  the  further  function  of 
establishing  canons  of  discipline,  as  called  for  by  the 
circumstances  of  the  Church  and  the  times.  But  inas- 
much as  in  no  Ecumenical  Council  were  the  bishops 
all  actually  assembled,  and  as  political  expedients 
might  be  (and  were)  resorted  to  to  secure  a  pre- 
arranged decision,  and  a  selection  of  bishops  might  be 
made  to  compose  the  Council,  who  were  supposed  or 
known  to  favor  the  desired  decision,  it  was  soon  found 


JO       C liristetidom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

that  the  mere  assembly  of  a  Council,  and  the  con- 
firmation of  its  decrees  by  the  emperor  were  not 
sufficient  to  guarantee  its  Ecumenical  character.  In 
process  of  time,  therefore,  it  came  to  be  seen  that  a 
General  Council  was  not  constituted  by  numbers  (for 
several  Councils  larger  than  that  of  Nicaea  are  not 
allowed  to  be  such);  nor  were  its  decisions  binding 
upon  their  first  publication  ;  but  that  it  needed  to  be 
accepted  and  ratified  by  the  Church  at  large,  as  having 
been  impartially  summoned,  as  having  the  liberty  to 
deliberate  under  the  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and 
as  bearing  witness  to  the  truth  held  and  professed 
in  the  Church  from  the  beginning.  And  so  it  was  that 
in  a  controversy  about  doctrines,  the  last  resort  was  to 
an  Ecumenical  Council,  fully  called,  freely  deliberating 
and  generally  received.  It  never  entered  into  the 
head  of  any  one  in  the  early  ages  of  the  Church  that 
the  Bishop  of  Rome  could  establish  a  doctrine  by 
virtue  of  his  infallibility. 

2. — The  second  adjustment  needed  was  an  appellate 
authority — a  Court  of  Appeals,  so  to  speak — to  which 
a  bishop  or  other  member  of  the  Church,  oppressed  by 
a  partisan  or  heretical  faction,  could  appeal  from  the 
unjust  sentence  of  his  own  provincial  synod.  In  the 
confusion  wrought  by  Constantius  there  were  many 
such  cases,  and  the  old  method  of  appealing  by  letters 
to  the  consensus  of  the  Catholic  Church  which  was  not 
disturbed  by  the  local  trouble,*   was  made   impossible 

*  "  Securus  judicet  orbis  terrarum." — Au^uslitif.  See  Newman's  Apo- 
logia, p.  157. 


From  Co7istantine  to  the  Reformation.        71 

by  the  new  relation  to  the  emperor.  The  head  of  the 
State  was  willing  enough  to  accept  this  appellate 
jurisdiction  ;  but  it  was  speedily  apparent  how  danger- 
ous it  would  be  to  concede  it  to  him,  and  canons  were 
made  against  "  troubling  the  emperor's  ears."  I  showed 
in  the  last  lecture  how  this  matter  of  appeals  was 
regulated  for  the  Eastern  Church  by  the  Councils 
of  Constantinople  and  Chalcedon — an  appeal  being 
allowed  from  the  synod  of  the  Province  to  that  of  the 
Diocesis,  and  in  the  last  resort  to  the  Patriarchal 
throne  of  Constantinople  ;  but  during  the  half-century 
succeeding  the  Nicene  Council  there  was  no  settled 
rule,  either  in  the  East  or  the  West.  To  some,  as  we 
shall  see,  it  appeared  the  safe  plan  to  make  the  Bishop 
of  Rome  the  appellate  authority  ;  and  the  persistent 
claim  to  that  authority,  founded  upon  a  strained 
construction  of  certain  canons  of  the  Council  of  Sardica 
(A.D.  343),*  was  the  means  by  which  that  prelate, 
aided  by  the  circumstances  of  the  times,  attained  his 
commanding  position  in  the  West. 

During  the  progress  of  the  Arian  troubles,  the 
Bishop  of  Rome  was  applied  to,  on  several  occasions, 
by  those  who  were  oppressed  in  the  East,  to  represent 
their  case  to  the  Western  Emperor,  that  he  might 
exert  a  restraining  influence  over  the  Emperor  of  the 
East.  St.  Athanasius,  who  had  been  banished  by 
Constantine,    was   restored   at   his    death,   by  his  son 

*  Usually  assigned  to  the  year  347  ;  but  see  Robertson  I.,  226,  note. 


72       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Constantine  II.,  who  ruled  in  Gaul,  Spain  and  Britain, 
and  was  undisturbed  as  long  as  he  lived.  On  his 
death,  he  was  again  banished,  and  retired  to  Rome, 
where  by  the  influence  of  the  western  bishops  he 
gained  the  ear  of  the  Emperor  Constans,  who  required 
Constantius  to  restore  him  ;  which  he  did,  and  Athan- 
asius  remained  in  possession  of  his  see  until  the  death 
of  Constans,  when  Constantius  again  displaced  him. 
So  on  the  accession  of  Valens,  the  bishops  who  held 
the  Synod  of  Lampsacus,  fearing  persecution,  applied 
to  Liberius,  Bishop  of  Rome,  to  secure  the  protection 
of  Valentinian,  the  Western  Emperor  ;  and  later  still, 
St.  Basil  and  his  adherents  applied  to  Damasus  of 
Rome,  and  other  western  bishops  for  the  same  media- 
tion with  the  same  Emperor.  In  the  meantime,  how- 
ever, an  attempt  had  been  made  to  invest  the  Bishop 
of  Rome  with  a  real  appellate  authority.  The  Council 
of  Antioch,  which  condemned  Athanasius  in  341,  had 
passed  certain  canons,  which  virtually  provided  that 
the  rehearing  on  an  appeal  should  be  before  the  authors 
of  the  original  injustice  ;  and  that  if  a  bishop  appealed 
to  the  Emperor  he  should  have  no  hope  of  restoration. 
The  idea  of  the  Arians  was  to  obtain,  by  imperial  help, 
control  of  the  Metropolitan  sees,  and  by  the  operation 
of  these  canons,  gradually  to  weed  out  the  Catholic 
bishops.  To  prevent  this,  the  Council  of  Sardica, 
which  was  held  immediately  after  that  of  Antioch, 
enacted,  as  a  temporary  measure,  that  in  case  of 
injustice  done  to  a  bishop  by  a  provincial  synod,  the 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        73 

matter  should  be  laid,  "  for  the  honor  of  the  Apostle 
Peter,"  before  Julius,  Bishop  of  Rome,  who  should,  in 
case  he  thought  a  rehearing  necessary,  name  certain 
bishops  from  the  neighboring  provinces  to  sit  as 
assessors,  and  also,  if  he  thought  it  necessary,  delegate 
one  of  his  own  presbyters  to  watch  the  case.  The 
mention  of  Julius,  Bishop  of  Rome,  by  name,  shows 
that  this  provision  was  only  intended  for  the  time  then 
being ;  since  the  authority  so  conferred  would  of 
necessity  lapse  at  his  death  ;  and  yet  these  canons 
were  the  starting-point  for  the  assumption  of  all  the 
power  which  the  Roman  bishops  ultimately  obtained. 

But,  just  as  a  seed,  in  order  to  germinate,  needs  to 
be  planted  in  suitable  soil,  and  to  have  heat,  air  and 
moisture,  so  a  claim  of  power  and  authority,  which  is 
new  and  in  the  germ,  needs,  in  order  to  be  successful, 
circumstances  favorable  to  its  success.  Unless  there 
are  reasons  why  the  public  should  favor  it  and  advance 
it,  it  falls  into  ground  barren  and  unfruitful.  It  is  not 
sufficient  for  the  historian,  therefore,  simply  to  mark  the 
steps  of  growth  ;  a  philosophical  view  of  the  subject 
points  out  the  causes  and  conditions  of  the  development. 
There  can  be  nothing  more  admirable  in  its  way,  than 
the  complete  and  succinct  review  which  Dr.  Hussey 
compresses  into  three  short  lectures,*  of  the  various 
steps  by  which  the  Bishops  of  Rome  ascended  to  the 
Papacy  ;  but  the  student  of  those  admirable  lectures 

*  Hussey's  Rise  of  the  Papal  Power.     Oxford,  1863. 


74       C kristeiidoin  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


must  feel  that  something  more  is  wanting  than  the 
account  there  given  ;  and  that  the  facts  brought  for- 
ward need  to  be  analyzed,  and  the  causes  which  made 
the  usurpation  successful  explained.  A  power  and 
authority  which  were  new  were  claimed  by  the  party 
interested  ;  in  some  cases  the  claim  was  resisted  and 
disallowed,  in  others  it  was  successfully  asserted  ;  the 
circumstances  need  to  be  understood,  the  causes  which 
give  it  vitality,  the  conditions  of  its  growth.  Such 
causes,  conditions  and  circumstances,  in  this  case,  I  find 
in  the  union  of  Church  and  State,  the  reaction  against 
the  imperial  despotism,  and  the  need  the  Church  had 
of  a  leader  in  that  reaction.  It  is  an  easy  and  popular 
explanation,  that  the  removal  of  the  seat  of  empire 
from  Rome  to  Constantinople  left  the  field  open  for  the 
Bishop  of  Rome  ;  that  the  Bishop  of  Rome  put  himself 
at  the  head  of  the  barbarian  kingdoms,  and  assisted 
their  nascent  civilization,  and  that  he  received  his 
ample  reward  in  their  affectionate  allegiance  to  him. 
But  this  explanation,  though  plausible  and  popular,  is, 
like  many  plausible  and  popular  explanations,  insufifi- 
cient  and  misleading.  For  the  fact  is,  that  the  enormous 
expansion  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome's  credit  and  influence 
in  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  arose  out  of  the  con- 
nection with  the  Eastern  Church,  and  the  part  he  was 
enabled  to  play  in  the  controversies  and  disputes  which 
distracted  it.  The  Western  Church  was  comparatively 
free  from  Arianism  and  unanimous  in  support  of  the 
Nicene  Council,  and  the  Western  Emperor  did  not  find 


From  Constantme  to  the  Reformation.       75 

or  make  occasion  to  interfere  actively  in  Church  affairs. 
The  Bishop  of  Rome,  therefore,  was  free  from  the  incon- 
veniences to  which  the  eastern  bishops  were  exposed, 
and  was  able  to  act  as  the  champion  of  orthodoxy 
against  the  Emperor  of  the  East  at  less  personal  risk  to 
himself,  because  he  was  out  of  his  reach.  It  was  to  the 
interest  of  the  Eastern  Church,  in  its  conflicts  with  the 
emperor,  to  make  much  of  the  bishop  of  the  city  which 
gave  its  name  to  the  empire.  And  therefore,  instead 
of  casting  in  his  lot  with  the  new  life  of  the  West,  the 
Bishop  of  Rome  clung  to  the  eastern  connection  as 
long  as  he  could,  and  was,  for  a  long  time,  thought  a 
more  considerable  person  in  the  East,  than  he  was  in 
the  West. 

But  while  the  Eastern  Church,  in  its  contests  with 
the  Emperor,  was  willing  to  exalt  the  Bishop  of  Rome's 
authority,  it  was  very  jealous  of  his  interference  in  its 
own  proper  affairs,  and  met  every  assertion  of  his 
supremacy  with  a  distinct  and  decided  negative.  The 
canons  of  Sardica  were  never  received  in  the  East,  and 
as  soon  as  opportunity  offered,  the  appellate  system  of 
the  Eastern  Church  was  arranged  so  as  to  exclude  his 
interposition.  And  therefore,  in  studying  the  relations 
of  the  Eastern  Church  to  the  see  of  Rome,  we  meet 
with  two  classes  of  facts,  which  it  seems  hard  to  har- 
monize, and  yet  which  are  quite  consistent  with  the 
situation.  On  the  one  hand  we  find  expressions  of 
oriental  adulation  and  exaggeration  applied  to  the  see 
of  Rome  ;    on  the  other  hand,  we  find  a  somewhat 


76       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

unceremonious  disregard  of  its  assumptions.  And  we 
may  safely  conclude  that  the  Eastern  Church  under- 
stood the  Roman  policy  from  the  beginning,  and  was  on 
its  guard  against  it. 

It  stands  to  reason  that  the  idea  of  a  Roman  suprem- 
acy in  or  over  the  Church  should  take  root  at  Rome 
itself  before  it  did  elsewhere;  and  therefore  it  is  quite 
important  to  know  when  and  by  whom  the  claim  was 
first  made,  how  it  was  received  by  the  Church  at  large, 
and  what  circumstances  limited  it,  as  well  as  what 
enabled  it  to  make  progress  against  the  opposition 
which  its  novelty  provoked.  Now  we  can  put  our 
fingers  upon  the  precise  point  of  time  when  the  idea  of 
a  primacy  of  power  in  the  Church — a  supremacy,  if  you 
will — entered  into  the  mind  and  policy  of  the  Bishop  of 
Rome.  It  was  when  Damasus  succeeded  Libcrius. 
And  the  treatment  by  Damasus  of  St.  Meletius  of  An- 
tioch,  and  of  St.  Basil  and  his  adherents,  under  the 
persecution  of  the  Emperor  Valens,  opened  the  eyes  of 
the  Eastern  Church  at  once  to  the  nature  of  his 
pretensions,  and  made  it  forever  after  watchful  and 
suspicious  of  the  encroachments  of  his  successors. 

When  Julius  of  Rome  wrote  to  the  bishops  of  the 
Council  of  Antioch  in  341,  that  instead  of  proceeding 
as  they  had  done  against  St.  Athanasius  and  the  others, 
"word  should  have  been  written  of  it  to  us  all,  that  so 
a  just  sentence  might  proceed  from  all,"  it  is  plain  that 
he  had  no  idea  of  anything  else  than  the  old  system  of 
the  ante-Nicene  Church.     It  was  against  this  Council  of 


Prom  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.       77 

Antioch  that  the  Council  of  Sardica  passed  the  canons 
I  have  spoken  of.  While  Liberius  was  bishop — he  who 
was  banished  by  Constantius,  and  who  after  two  years 
of  exile  failed  in  constancy  and  consented  to  the  con- 
demnation of  Athanasius — there  was  no  opportunity  to 
assert  the  prerogative,  even  in  the  form  which  the 
Council  of  Sardica  granted  it.  But  when  Damasus 
succeeded  to  the  Roman  pontificate  (Oct.  i,  366),  the 
idea  of  an  executive  and  appellate  authority  over  the 
Church  entered  with  him  into  possession  of  the  Roman 
see,  and  became  a  part  of  its  tradition  and  policy. 
Several  circumstances  concurred  to  favor  it  at  this  time, 
and  I  must  ask  your  patience  to  permit  an  explanation 
of  them.  In  364  Valentinian  became  Emperor.  He 
was  a  successful  general,  and  for  military  reasons 
selected  the  West  for  his  dominion,  committing  the 
empire  of  the  East  to  his  brother  Valens.  The  two 
brothers  seem  to  have  pursued  different  policies  in 
matters  of  religion  ;  while  Valens  attempted  to  compel 
the  orthodox  to  hold  communion  with  the  heretics, 
Valentinian  pursued  a  course  of  non-intervention  in 
Church  affairs,  except  so  far  as  was  necessary  to  keep 
order  in  the  State.  But  the  condition  of  the  Church  of 
Rome  on  the  accession  of  Damasus  compelled  the 
authorities  to  have  recourse  to  the  Emperor.  His  elec- 
tion was  disputed,  a  faction  set  up  Ursinus  against  him, 
and  the  dissension  grew  so  fierce  as  to  lead  to  riot  and 
bloodshed  and  slaughter.  The  Emperor  restored  order 
by  banishing  the  faction  of  Ursinus,  and  confirmed  the 


78       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

authority  of  Damasus  by  several  decrees,  among  which 
was  one  that  enacted  (if  the  words  are  a  quotation,  as 
they  seem  to  be)  that  "  the  pontiff  of  religion  with  his 
assessors  should  judge  concerning  religion" — a  trans- 
lation, apparently,  into  legal  language,  of  the  provisions 
of  the  Sardican  canons. 

Now  this  term  "pontiff"  inserted  in  an  imperial 
decree,  and  given  thereby  a  legal  value,  is  a  matter  of 
much  more  importance  than  appears  at  first  sight.  In 
law,  words  are  things,  and  are  subjected  to  legal 
manipulation,  extending  or  limiting  powers  as  the 
lawyers  determine.  This  decree,  therefore,  enabling 
the  Bishop  of  Rome  to  assume  the  legal  title  of 
"  pontiff,"  permitted  the  pretension  that  the  powers  of 
Pontifex  Maxirmis  in  the  Roman  State  appertained  to 
him  so  far  as  the  Christian  religion  was  concerned — 
especially  after  the  Emperor  Gratian  abdicated  the 
office,  as  we  are  told  he  did.  It  is  curious  that 
Damasus  is  called  "  the  pontiff"  in  various  documents 
of  the  time  ;  and  it  may  be  permitted  to  conjecture 
that  being  not  only  an  astute  politician,  but  a  man  of 
some  literary  affectation,  he  had  adopted  it  as  the 
Latin  equivalent  of  the  Greek  Episcopus,  and  had  the 
adroitness  to  secure  its  insertion  in  the  imperial  re- 
scripts for  which  he  had  to  petition,  to  be  delivered  from 
the  party  of  Ursinus.  However  this  may  be,  and 
whether  Valentinian  used  this  particular  term  or  not, 
it  is  certain  that  Theodosius  did,  in  that  famous  decree 
which  he  issued  in    380,  on   taking  the  government  of 


From  Constantme  to  the  Reformation.       79 

the  East  :  "  We  would  have  all  the  nations  whom  our 
gracious  government  rules,  to  be  of  that  religion  which 
the  Apostle  Peter  is  proved  to  have  delivered  to  the 
Romans,  *  *  *  which  also  it  is  plain  the  Pontiff 
Damasus  follows,  and  Peter,  Bishop  of  Alexandria," 
etc.,  etc.  It  is  unquestionable  that  the  term  is  given 
to  him  in  this  decree,  as  a  legal  title  ;  and  the  effect  of 
its  legal  use,  as  a  distinctive  appellation,  upon  the 
position  of  the  Bishops  of  Rome  could  not  fail  to  be 
great,  seeing  that  they  knew  how  to  take  advantage 
of  it. 

It  was  a  great  thing  for  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  that 
the  Emperor  acknowledged  him  to  be  Pontiff,  and 
made  his  faith  the  rule  of  orthodoxy  for  the  empire. 
But  there  is  something  more  to  be  noticed  in  this 
decree  of  Theodosius.  The  Emperor  adduces  the 
faith  of  Peter  of  Alexandria,  as  well  as  of"  the  Pontiff 
Damasus,"  to  certify  the  religion  which  "  the  Apostle 
Peter  delivered  to  the  Romans."  Now  it  is  natural  to 
understand  by  "  Romans,"  the  members  of  the  local 
Church  of  Rome  ;  but  if  that  be  the  meaning,  why  is 
Peter  of  Alexandria  associated  with  Damasus  as  a 
witness  to  it }  Let  us  remember  that  as  far  back  as 
the  early  part  of  the  third  century,  Caracalla  had 
bestowed  the  Roman  franchise  upon  all  the  free  inhabi- 
tants of  the  empire,  thereby  making  them  citizens  of 
Rome  ;  and  let  us  remember  also  that  the  Bishops  of 
Rome,  in  their  controversies  with  the  patriarchs  of 
Constantinople,  claimed  that  Antioch  and  Alexandria 


8o       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


should  take  precedence  of  Constantinople,  because 
their  Churches,  like  that  of  Rome,  were  founded  by  St. 
Peter,  the  former  by  the  Apostle  in  person,  the  latter 
by  his  disciple  St.  Mark.  Now  the  Church  of  Antioch 
at  this  time  was  in  dispute  between  Meletius  and 
Paulinus,  and  therefore  could  not  be  referred  to  in 
Theodosius'  decree  ;  but  the  associating  Peter  of 
Alexandria  with  Damasus  shows  that  Theodosius 
meant  by  Romans,  not  the  actual  inhabitants  of  the 
city,  but  the  possessors  of  the  franchise  throughout  the 
empire.  It  was  easy  therefore  to  infer  that  as  "  Pontiff" 
and  Bishop  of  Rome,  Damasus  was  in  a  certain  sense, 
Bishop  of  the  Romans,  Pontifex  Maximus  and  so 
regulator  of  the  religion  of  the  empire. 

And  that  was  what  Damasus  intended  to  be,  as  his 
conduct  with  respect  to  St.  Meletius  of  Antioch  showed. 
Scarcely  a  year  had  passed,  however,  before  Theodosius 
discovered  important  reasons  for  modifying  his  decree. 
At  the  time  of  its  publication  he  was  at  Thessalonica, 
and  the  Bishop  of  Thessalonica,  Ascholius,  had  special 
relations  with  Damasus.  Macedonia  and  Achaia  had 
up  to  this  time  been  attached  to  the  Western  Empire, 
and  Ascholius  had  attended  the  Western  Councils  ;  but 
Gratian,  when  he  appointed  Theodosius  Emperor  of 
the  East  attached  these  countries  to  his  government 
for  military  reasons,  and  so  Ascholius  became  associ- 
ated with  the  Eastern  Church.  Damasus  therefore 
made  him  the  medium  of  communication  with  the  East, 
and    trusted     to   him    for   information    concerning   its 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.       8i 

affairs,  and  in  this  way  drew  him  under  his  influence. 
Theodosius  while  at  Thessalonica  had  a  severe  illness, 
during  which  he  received  baptism  from  Ascholius  ;  he 
therefore  naturally  consulted  him  with  regard  to  the 
Eastern  Church,  and  so  his  decree  reflected  the  ideas 
of  Ascholius  and  Damasus.  But  shortly  afterwards 
the  Emperor  went  to  Constantinople,  and  there  met 
St.  Gregory  Nazianzen,  who  gave  him  a  better  account 
of  the  Eastern  Church  and  its  relations  with  Damasus  ; 
whereupon  he  issued  another  decree  of  different  tenor, 
and  in  a  short  time  assembled  the  Second  General 
Council  to  settle  the  affairs  of  the  East. 

Here  I  have  to  ask  your  attention  to  an  episode  in 
Church  history,  which  is  really  the  key  to  the  relations 
of  Rome  and  the  East  for  all  subsequent  time,  and 
which  is  not  given  by  the  historians  the  importance  it 
deserves.  In  the  last  year  of  the  reign  of  Constantius 
(A.D.  361)  a  Council  of  the  politico-ecclesiastical  party 
which  was  supported  by  the  Emperor,  transferred 
Eudoxius,  who  was  the  head  of  that  party,  to  Constan- 
tinople, and  made  St.  Meletius  Bishop  of  Antiochin  his 
place.  In  a  few  days  they  found  out  that  they  had 
made  a  mistake  ;  for  Meletius  was  orthodox,  and  as 
.  soon  as  he  had  gained  the  attention  of  his  flock,  began 
to  preach  the  Nicene  faith.  He  was  therefore  deprived 
and  banished,  but  returned  to  Antioch  on  the  accession 
of  Julian.  At  the  same  time  Athanasius  returned  to 
Alexandria,  and  with  him  there  came  two  western 
bishops,  Eusebius  of  Vercelli,  and  Lucifer  of  Calaris, 


82       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

who  had  been  exiled  to  the  Egyptian  desert  some 
years  before  by  Constantius.  These  two  were  sent  by 
Athanasius  to  Antioch  to  labor  for  the  peace  of  the 
Church  ;  but  Lucifer,  being  a  hot-headed  man,  refused 
to  communicate  with  Meletius,  and  consecrated  a 
presbyter,  named  Paulinus,  to  be  Bishop  of  Antioch.  * 
Paulinus  had  been  the  minister  of  a  congregation  which 
remained  firm  through  all  the  preceding  troubles,  and 
therefore  Athanasius  could  not  reject  his  communion, 
though  he  regretted  his  consecration,  and  would  have 
been  willing  to  acknowledge  Meletius,  to  whom  the 
orthodox  East  were  devotedly  attached.  There  was 
thus  a  schism  among  the  faithful,  Egypt  acknowl- 
edging Paulinus  and  the  East  Meletius,  while  the  West 
stood  aloof  from  both.  Matters  were  in  this  state  when 
Valentinian  and  Valens  became  Emperors  ;  and  Valens 
not  only  threw  his  influence  in  favor  of  the  Latitudi- 
narian  party,  but  sought  to  compel  the  orthodox  to 
communicate  with  heretics  of  all  sorts.  He  expelled 
again  all  the  bishops  banished  by  Constantius  who  had 
returned  under  Julian,  and  Meletius  with  the  others 
was  sent  into  exile.  A  persecution  now  raged  all 
through  the  East,  vivid  pictures  of  which,  and  of  the 
misery  and  confusion  it  wrought,  are  given  in  the 
letters  of  St.  Basil,  and  in  the  ecclesiastical  historians. 
Not  only  were  orthodox  bishops  displaced  and  com- 
pliant tools  put  in  their  stead,  but  friendships  were 

*  This  Lucifer,  on  returning  to  the  West,  became  the  founder  of  a  sect 

called  Luciferians,  which  gave  Daniasus  imich  tri>ul)le. 


Prom  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.       %2i 

broken,  confidence  was  abused,  weak  men  turned 
traitors  and  tricksters  made  gain  of  lack  of  conscience, 
the  steadfast  were  wounded  by  false  friends  as  well  as 
open  enemies,  and  the  faith  was  in  danger  of  perishing 
through  proscription  professedly  in  the  interest  of 
toleration. 

In  this  state  of  affairs  there  was,  humanly  speaking, 
but  one  door  of  hope  for  the  down-trodden  orthodox 
East.  It  was  not  without  risk  for  subjects  of  the 
Eastern  Empire  to  appeal  to  the  Emperor  of  the  West, 
but  it  might  be  done  if  the  Western  Church  would  take 
up  their  cause.  Two  deputations  were  sent  into  the 
West  while  Liberius  was  Bishop  of  Rome,  one  in  364, 
and  another  in  the  spring  of  366,  to  solicit  such 
mediation  of  the  western  bishops  with  Valentinian  as 
would  induce  him  to  restrain  Valens.  They  were 
kindly  received,  but  there  was  no  opportunity  of 
reaching  the  Emperor,  who  was  engaged  in  military 
operations  against  the  Germans,  and  they  had  to  be 
content  with  the  Uteres  formates  that  were  granted 
them. 

Matters  were  in  this  condition  when  Damasus  suc- 
ceeded Liberius  ;  but  his  own  affairs  were  in  such  a 
state  that  Damasus  had  neither  power  nor  inclination 
to  exert  himself  in  behalf  of  the  East.  The  persecution 
continued  unchecked,  and  unabated.  In  370  St.  Basil 
became  Bishop  of  Caesarea  in  Cappadocia.  He  imme- 
diately revived  the  plan  of  seeking  union  with  the 
West,  and  so  of  reaching  the  Western  Emperor.     He 


§4       Christendo7ii  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

wrote  to  St.  Athanasius,  who  was  all-powerful  at  Rome, 
pleading  that  he  would  recognize  St.  Meletius,  and 
send  some  of  his  own  ecclesiastics  with  his  messenger 
to  the  West ;  since,  if  the  East  and  the  West  were 
united,  "the  Rulers  [/.  c,  the  Emperors]  would  respect 
the  faithfulness  of  the  multitude."  *  Athanasius  so  far 
acceded  to  this  request  as  to  send  a  messenger  to 
Rome,  who,  on  his  return,  was  accompanied  by  a 
deacon  named  Sabinus  with  letters  to  Athanasius, 
which  he  sent  to  St.  Basil  and  his  friends.  Encouraged 
by  this  little,  St.  Basil  and  the  friends  of  Meletius  wrote 
other  letters  to  the  West,  which  they  sent  back  by 
Sabinus,  asking  that  the  bishops  of  the  West  would 
send  a  deputation  to  visit  the  Churches.  No  answer 
was  returned  ;  but  the  next  year  the  letters  themselves 
were  sent  back  as  unsatisfactory,  and  it  was  intimated 
to  the  writers  that  if  they  wished  for  any  help  from 
the  West,  they  must  write  in  a  form  dictated  by 
Damasus  himself,  t  Wherein  they  were  defective  does 
not  appear  ;  but  there  can  be  little  doubt,  from  St. 
Basil's  expressions  in  his  subsequent  letters,  that  what 
was  wanted  was  some  acknowledgment  of  the  Roman 
"  pontificate,"  according  to  the  new  ideas  of  Damasus. 
St.  Basil  was  deeply  disappointed,  and  expressed  his 
opinion  freely  on  the  pride  of  the  Roman  bishop,  and 
although  some  of  his  friends  were  in  favor  of  another 
embassy,  he  would  not  consent  to  it,  and  nothing  more 

*St.  Basil,  Ep.  66.  f  St.  Basil,  Ep.  138. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        85 


was  done  for  two  years.  Damasus  now  seems  to  have 
felt  it  necessary  to  put  some  pressure  upon  the  friends 
of  Meletius,  and  in  375  he  wrote  a  letter  to  Paulinus  of 
Antioch,  acknowledging  him,  and  making  him  the 
medium  of  his  communications  with  the  East.  I  must 
quote  the  sentence  in  which  St.  Basil  announces  this 
intelligence  to  Meletius,  still  in  exile.  "Letters  have 
reached  us,"  he  says,  "  signifying  that  there  have  been 
brought  to  Paulinus  and  his  party  several  epistles  from 
the  West,  as  if  tokens  from  some  principality,  and  that 
the  chiefs  of  his  faction  thought  great  things,  and 
glorified  themselves  with  these  letters  ;  then  that  they 
set  forth  a  creed,  and  with  that  were  ready  to  enter 
into  communion  with  our  Church."*  About  this  time 
Valentinian  died,  and  his  son  Gratian,  still  a-  youth, 
became  Emperor  of  the  West  ;  and  some  of  the 
Easterns  seem  to  have  thought  the  time  propitious  for 
another  effort.  They  proposed  that  St.  Basil's  brother, 
Gregory  of  Nyssa,  should  go  to  Rome  ;  but  St.  Basil 
objected,  asking  "  what  benefit  would  there  be  to  the 
common  cause  from  the  approach  of  such  a  man,  whose 
manners  are  foreign  to  slavish  flattery,  to  one  high  and 
lifted  up,  and  sitting  somewhere  aloft,  and  for  that 
reason  unable  to  hear  those  who  from  the  ground  call 
out  the  truth  to  him."t  In  376,  however,  certain 
presbyters  went  to  the  West,  and  St.  Basil  wrote  a 
letter  by  them  to  the  bishops  of  Gaul  and  Italy.     "  At 

*St.  Basil,  Ep.  2i6.  f  St.  Basil,  Ep.  2I5< 


86       Christe7idom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

different  times  in  the  past,"  he  says,  "  we  have  called 
upon  your  love  for  support  and  sympathy  ;  but  because 
the  vengeance  was  not  fulfilled,  ye  were  not  permitted 
to  assist  us.  Our  chief  desire  is  that  through  your 
considerateness  our  confusion  be  made  clear  to  the 
Ruler  of  your  world  \i.  e.,  to  the  new  Emperor 
Gratian]  ;  but,  if  this  be  difficult,  that  some  of  you 
come  to  us  for  visitation  and  comfort  of  the  afflicted, 
that  they  may  be  eye-witnesses  of  the  sufferings  of  the 
East."  Some  kind  of  an  answer  was  returned,  and 
other  letters  were  written  the  next  year  ;  but  beyond 
an  acknowledgment  of  them  by  Damasus  nothing  was 
done.  In  378  Valens  was  killed  in  battle  against  the 
Goths.  Gratian  then  made  a  decree  permitting  all 
who  had  been  banished  for  religion  to  return  to  their 
homes  ;  among  the  rest  St.  Meletius  returned  to 
Antioch,  where  he  held  a  Council  of  146  bishops,  who 
made  a  statement  of  their  faith,  which  they  sent 
into  the  West.  In  January  379,  Theodosius  became 
Emperor  of  the  East,  and  now  that  both  Emperors 
were  orthodox,  the  West  awoke  from  its  apathy.  The 
western  bishops  proposed  that  Meletius  and  Paulinus 
should  together  rule  the  church  of  Antioch,  and  that 
a  Council  should  be  held  at  Alexandria  to  settle  all 
other  affairs.  But  the  East  was  naturally  suspicious  of 
this  new-born  zeal,  and  both  propositions  were  respect- 
fully declined. 

Such  was  the  situation  when  Theodosius  came  to 
Constantinople   in  the  winter  of  380-1.      There,  as  I 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.       87 

said,  he  learned  from  St.  Gregory  Nazianzen  the  truth 
concerning  the  Eastern  Church,  and  superseded  his 
decree  of  the  year  before,  making  the  faith  of  "  the 
pontiff  Damasus,"  and  of  Peter  of  Alexandria  the  test 
of  orthodoxy,  by  another  decree  commanding  that  the 
churches  be  delivered  to  "the  orthodox  bishops  who 
hold  the  Nicene  faith,"  and  defining  a  holder  of  the 
Nicene  faith  to  be  one  "  who  confesses  the  omnipotent 
God,  and  Christ  the  Son  of  God  to  be  one  in  name,  God 
of  God,  Light  of  Light ;  who  does  not  violate  the  Holy 
Spirit  by  denying  Him  ;  who  acknowledges  the  un- 
divided substance  of  the  incorruptible  Trinity,  which  in 
the  Greek  language  is  called  ovaia.  *  Theodosius  then 
summoned  the  bishops  to  Constantinople  to  form  the 
Second  Ecumenical  Council,  and  when  St.  Meletius 
arrived  in  that  city,  he  received  him  with  such  marked 
favor  that  it  seemed  necessary  to  atcount  for  it  by  the 
fable  that  before  his  elevation  the  Emperor  had  a 
prophetic  dream,  in  which  Meletius  handed  him  the 
insignia  of  sovereignty.  St.  Meletius  presided  at  the 
Council  until  his  death  ;  after  which  the  Council  conse- 
crated Flavian  to  be  his  successor.  But  the  Westerns 
objected  to  this,  as  to  all  else  that  was  done  at  the 
Council,  and  continued  their  opposition  until  the  suc- 


*  By  this  word  ovaia  Theodosius  excluded  hypostasis  from  being  a  test 
word.  Some  of  the  Easterns  took  hypostasis  in  the  sense  of  subsistence, 
others  in  the  sense  of  substance.  The  one  side  asserted  three  hypostases 
in  the  Trinity,  the  other  only  one.  This  was  not  a  question  of  heresy, 
but  only  of  the  use  of  a  word. 


88       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  a7id  Political 


cession  of  Paulinus  died  out,  drawing  down  upon 
themselves  on  more  than  one  occasion  the  sharp 
rebuke  of  Theodosius.  Theodoret  tells  us  that  the 
schism  lasted  for  seventeen  years — that  is,  from  the 
letter  of  Damasus  to  Paulinus,  in  375,  to  the  death  of 
Evagrius,  his  successor,  when  the  East  made  good  its 
position  against  Rome,  and  peace  was  restored. 

Now  it  was  under  these  circumstances,  and  with  a 
full  consciousness  of  the  Roman  claim,  based  in  the 
first  instance  upon  the  canons  of  Sardica,  but  enlarged 
by  the  ambition  of  Damasus,  and  with  a  firm  determi- 
nation to  erect  a  barrier  against  it,  that  the  Council  of 
Constantinople  passed  its  famous  canons,  giving  Con- 
stantinople the  second  rank,  "  because  it  is  New 
Rome,"  making  the  synod  of  the  Diocesis  the  receiver 
of  appeals  from  the  provinces,  and  prohibiting  the 
invasion  of  one  Diocesis  by  the  bishops  of  another. 
The  treatment  which  the  East  had  received  from 
Damasus,  his  evident  attempt  to  assert  an  authority 
over  it  as  the  price  of  his  active  intervention,  his  cold, 
unsympathetic  and  selfish  neglect  of  the  suffering 
churches  in  their  hour  of  need,  his  sudden  activity 
when  the  danger  was  past,  and  his  attempt  to  unsettle 
the  settlement  of  the  Council — these  things  opened  the 
eyes  of  the  bishops  of  the  East  to  the  Roman  policy, 
and  determined  them  to  put  an  effectual  bar  in  the  way 
of  any  future  assertion  of  Roman  supremacy.  And  in 
all  subsequent  history,  the  East  never  forgot  the  lesson  it 
had  been  taught  by  this  episode  of  Damasus  and  Meletius. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Refortnatiori.        89 

I  have  dwelt  upon  this  passage  of  Church  history  at 
greater  length  than  agrees  with  the  scale  of  these 
lectures,  because  of  its  importance  as  marking  the 
beginning  of  the  Roman  claim  of  supremacy,  its  relation 
to  the  constitution  of  the  empire,  and  its  rejection  from 
the  very  first  by  the  East.  This  claim  was  the  special 
tradition  handed  down  by  Damasus  to  his  successors, 
and  it  suffered  no  diminution  in  the  hands  of  such  men 
as  Innocent  I.,  Celestine  and  Leo  the  Great.  As  I  read 
Church  history,  the  claim  originated  with  Damasus  ; 
but  once  consciously  adopted,  it  was  used  to  impart  a 
new  meaning  to  the  acts  of  ecclesiastical  intercourse 
which  were  customary  in  the  Church,  and  to  throw  back 
its  shadow  upon  the  past  by  misinterpreting  its  records. 

And  therefore,  in  studying  this  period  of  Church  his- 
tory, it  is  very  necessary  to  observe,  not  only  what  the 
bishops  of  Rome  claimed,  but  how  their  claims  were 
received  and  met  by  the  Church  at  large.  It  is  evident 
that  when  new  ideas  enter  a  system  at  any  centre  which 
is  powerful  enough  to  give  them  currency,  while  the  old 
ideas  rule  in  the  surrounding  environment,  the  same  act 
will  be  differently  interpreted  by  the  different  parties. 
That  which  was  done  with  a  definite  intent  according 
to  the  old  ideas,  will  be  twisted  to  a  new  meaning  by 
those  who  are  engaged  to  advance  the  novel  theory  ; 
and,  vice  versa,  the  act  done  with  a  definite  intent  to 
establish  the  new  claim  may  be  unsuspectingly  allowed 
as  a  customary  transaction  of  the  old  system.  The 
polity  of  the  primitive  Church  was  subjected  at  this 


90       Christendovi  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

time  to  this  double  interpretation,  and  as  circumstances 
favored  the  pretensions  of  the  Roman  see,  it  was  grad- 
ually transformed  by  infusion  of  the  new  ideas  into  the 
old  practice.  Things  were  done  as  they  always  had 
been  done,  but  a  new  meaning  was  put  upon  them  ; 
and  that  which  had  been  the  common  right  of  all 
bishops  was  considered  a  special  prerogative  of  the 
Bishop  of  Rome. 

I. — Thus,  for  example,  the  ox6\x\2.xy  literce  formates 
informing  the  bishops  of  the  Church  generally  of  the 
transactions  in  any  particular  province  were  taken  by 
the  Bishop  of  Rome,  when  they  were  sent  to  him,  as  an 
application  for  the  confirmation  of  a  sentence  by  pontif- 
ical authority,  or  as  the  appeal  of  an  aggrieved  party 
for  a  rehearing  ;  or,  if  the  decrees  of  a  Council  were 
communicated  for  information,  they  were  assumed  to 
be  submitted  in  order  that  they  might  obtain  the  force 
of  law  by  his  approval ;  whereas  there  had  been  no  such 
intention  on  the  part  of  those  who  sent  them.  The 
typical  instances  are  those  of  the  African  Church  in  the 
affairs  of  Pelagius  and  Celestius,  and  later  of  Apiarius. 
Pelagianism,  as  a  heresy,  aff*ected  the  whole  Church ; 
the  Africans  therefore  reported  their  condemnation  of  it 
to  Innocent  I.,  of  Rome,  asking  him,  according  to  the 
ceremonious  mode  of  address  of  the  time,  to  affix  to  the 
statutes  of  their  humility,  the  authority  of  the  Apostolic 
see.  Innocent  replied,  congratulating  them  on  knowing 
what  was  due  to  the  Apostolic  see,  and  concurring  in 
their  sentence.    But  some  time  after,  Celestius  appeared 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        91 

at  Rome,  and  appealed  to  Zosimus,  Innocent's  successor, 
for  a  reversal  of  his  condemnation  ;  and  Zosimus, 
agreeably  to  the  principle  that  appeals  must  be  encour- 
aged by  a  decision,  if  possible,  in  favor  of  the  appellant, 
took  up  his  cause,  and  would  have  pronounced  his 
acquittal,  had  not  the  Africans,  whose  great  light  was 
St.  Augustine,  possessed  sufficient  influence  at  court  to 
procure  an  imperial  decree  condemning  the  heresy ; 
whereupon  Zosimus  wrote  to  Africa  that  he  held  the 
matter  under  consideration,  and  shortly  after  he  con- 
demned Celestius,  covering  up  his  retractation  with  the 
assertion  that  the  bishops  of  Rome  inherit  from  St. 
Peter  a  divine  authority  equal  to  St.  Peter's,  so  that  no 
one  can  question  their  decision.  The  Africans,  how- 
ever, paid  no  attention  to  this  claim  of  Zosimus,  having 
previously  informed  him  that  as  the  cause  arose  in 
Africa,  he  could  take  no  cognizance  of  it.  The  case  of 
Apiarius  had  a  similar  result.  He  had  been  degraded 
by  his  bishop  for  immorality,  and  appealed  to  Rome. 
Zosimus  commanded  his  restoration,  and  the  Africans 
refused.  Zosimus  sent  a  legate  to  enforce  his  decree, 
who  quoted  the  Sardican  canons  as  belonging  to  the 
Council  of  Nicsea.  The  Africans  thereupon  sent  to 
Constantinople,  Alexandria  and  Antioch  for  correct 
copies  of  the  Nicene  canons,  and  finding  them  to  agree 
with  their  own  copies  in  not  containing  the  alleged 
provisions,  they  requested  the  Bishop  of  Rome  to  relieve 
them  of  the  presence  of  his  legate,  both  then  and  for 
the  future. 


92       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

2. — So  again,  when  the  number  of  Councils  and  the 
canons  they  enacted  increased  as  they  did  in  the  fourth 
century,  the  bishops  of  outlying  or  secluded  districts 
would  naturally  have  recourse  to  some  well-informed 
authority  to  learn  what  the  rules  were.  When  St. 
Amphilochius  was  made  Bishop  of  Iconium  in  Pisidia, 
he  wrote  to  St.  Basil  for  instruction  in  the  canons,  and 
St.  Basil  sent  him  in  reply  his  three  canonical  epistles, 
so  called.  In  the  same  way,  Himerius,  Bishop  of 
Tarracona  in  Spain,  wrote  to  Siricius,  the  successor  of 
Damasus,  for  information  of  the  same  sort,  and  Siricius 
replied  with  a  letter  of  precisely  the  same  character  as 
St.  Basil's.  But  because  Siricius  was  Bishop  of  Rome, 
his  letter  is  set  down  as  a  decretal  epistle  ;  as  if  the 
Bishop  of  Rome,  instead  of  telling  him  what  the  law 
was,  or  what  he  thought  it  was,  had  enacted  it  by  his 
own  authority.  And  so  we  are  told  in  the  histories, 
that  this  letter  of  Siricius  is  the  first  authentic  decretal. 
It  was  in  fact,  so  far  as  appears,  the  first  decretal  ever 
issued  by  a  Bishop  of  Rome — truly  not  a  decretal  at 
all  ;  but,  for  all  that,  the  origin  and  foundation  of  that 
whole  mass  of  decretal  law,  by  which  the  Papacy 
profited  so  much  in  after  times. 

3.—  Once  more  :  When  Ascholius  of  Thessalonica 
acted  in  correspondence  with  Damasus  in  the  affairs  of 
the  East,  he  had  no  idea  that  he  was  being  made  a 
Vicar  Apostolic  of  the  see  of  Rome  ;  and  yet  his 
alliance  with  Damasus  was  made  the  precedent  for  a 
claim  of  jurisdiction   over  Eastern  Illyricum,  and  each 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        93 

succeeding  bishop  of  Thessalonica  was  duly  furnished 
with  letters  committing  to  him  the  powers  {vices, 
whence  vicar)  of  the  Apostolic  see.  And  so  the  prec- 
edent was  established  upon  which  the  doctrine  was 
built  up,  that  the  Apostolic  Vicariate  constituted  the 
bishop  who  exercised  it  the  primate  of  his  Diocesis,  and 
that  the  nomination  to  the  primacy  of  a  national 
Church  in  the  West  was  the  prerogative  of  the  Bishop 
of  Rome.  Eastern  Illyricum  (that  is,  Macedonia  and 
Greece),  because  of  its  peculiar  relations  both  to  the 
East  and  the  West,  was  so  situated  as  to  allow  the 
precedent  to  be  established  there.  The  extension  of 
the  idea  was  permitted  in  Gaul  by  the  dissensions  of 
the  churches  of  Aries  and  Vienne,  in  which  Leo  the 
Great  dealt  so  hardly  with  Hilary  of  Aries.  Thence  it 
advanced  into  Spain  ;  it  went  with  Augustine  into 
England  ;  from  England  it  was  taken  by  Boniface  into 
Germany,  and  so  it  spread  over  the  West.  The  East 
always  rejected  it. 

The  case  of  Hilary  of  Aries  is  important  because  it 
produced  the  imperial  decree  which  really  established 
the  Western  Patriarchate.  It  was  an  incident  in  a  long 
contest  between  Aries  and  Vienne,  important  cities  in 
Southern  Gaul  ;  and  the  story  shows  the  policy  of 
Rome  in  fostering  appeals  by  favoring  the  appellant 
whenever  it  was  possible  to  do  so.  There  were  two 
questions  involved,  one  the  right  of  Aries  to  be  the 
metropolis  of  a  province,  which  Vienne  denied  ;  the 
other  the   right   of  Aries  to   the  primacy  of  Southern 


94       Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Gaul,  which  Vienne  also  denied.  The  dispute  con- 
tinued from  the  pontificate  of  Innocent  (about  A.D. 
400)  to  that  of  Symmachus  (about  A.D.  500),  and  as 
I  liave  not  time  to  tell  the  story,  I  shall  merely  remark 
that  the  Bishop  of  Rome  received  appeals  alternately 
from  the  Bishops  of  Aries  and  Vienne,  and  usually 
decided,  without  any  care  for  consistency,  in  favor  of 
the  appellant.  This  is  Dr.  Hussey's  summary  of  this 
case  :  "  Zosimus,"  he  says,  "  made  a  new  regulation, 
professing  in  that  to  restore  the  rightful  primitive 
custom  of  Apostolic  times  ;  Popes  Boniface,  Celestine 
and  Leo  condemned  this,  and  set  it  aside.  Leo  called 
it  a  temporary  arrangement,  and  by  a  decree  of  his  own 
ordered  that  Aries  should  be  subject  to  Vienne  ;  and 
then,  after  a  few  years,  ordered  something  different, 
which  was  a  kind  of  compromise  between  the  two 
claims.  Anastasius  had  changed  this  again  ;  and  now 
Symmachus  revoked  Anastasius'  acts,  on  the  ground 
that  all  the  ordinances  of  St.  Peter's  chair  must  be 
perpetual  and  unchangeable."  In  the  course  of  this 
dispute  and  the  matters  growing  out  of  it,  Hilary  came 
into  collision  with  St.  Leo,  planting  himself  upon  the 
rights  of  his  see,  and  refusing  to  accept  Leo's  regula- 
tions. Leo  thereupon  procured  an  imperial  rescript, 
confirming,  or  rather  conferring  upon  him — since  it  had 
no  real  existence  before — the  patriarchal  authority 
over  the  West  :  "We  decree,  by  a  perpetual  sanction, 
that  nothing  shall  be  attempted  against  ancient  custom 
by  the  bishops  of  Gaul  or  other  provinces,  without  the 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        95 

authority  of  the  venerable  Pope  of  the  eternal  city  : 
but  whatever  the  authority  of  the  Apostolic  chair 
ordains  shall  be  law  to  them  ;  so  that  if  any  bishop 
when  summoned  shall  omit  to  come  to  the  court  of  the 
Roman  bishop,  he  shall  be  compelled  to  come  by  the 
governor  of  the  province." 

But  this  patriarchal  authority  over  the  West,  with 
which  the  Bishop  of  Rome  was  invested  by  the  weak 
and  worthless  Valentinian  III.,  speedily  fell  into  tem- 
porary abeyance.  Within  thirty  years  from  the  date  of 
this  decree,  the  last  Western  Emperor  was  deposed,  the 
insignia  of  sovereignty  were  sent  to  Constantinople,  and 
the  Emperor  of  the  East  was  informed  that  the  one 
ruler  of  the  world  needed  no  colleague,  since  his  barba- 
rian servants  or  allies  would  relieve  him  of  the  care  of 
his  western  dominions.  In  the  troublous  times  which 
saw  the  establishment  of  the  new  kingdoms  of  the  West, 
there  was  little  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  patri- 
archal jurisdiction,  and  the  decree  of  Valentinian  became 
obsolete. 

It  is  somewhat  difficult  for  the  student  of  such  a 
manual  as  Robertson,  for  example,  unless  he  is  very 
well  read,  to  connect  the  secular  with  the  ecclesiastical 
history  of  the  times.  How  many  of  us  remember  that 
just  at  the  time  St.  Chrysostom  was  banished  from  Con- 
stantinople by  the  hostility  of  the  Empress  Eudoxia, 
the  Emperor  Honorius  was  driven  by  the  fear  of  Alaric 
to  transfer  the  seat  of  government  in  the  West  from 
Milan  to  Ravenna  ;  that  when  Pelagius  was  publishing 


96      C hriste^idoni  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

his  heresy,  and  Augustine  took  up  his  pen  to  fix  the 
theology  of  the  West  for  so  many  ages,  Alaric  was 
besieging  Rome  for  the  third  time  ;  that  by  the  time 
Pelagianism  was  condemned,  the  Goths  had  entered 
Spain  ;  that  while  the  Council  of  Ephesus  was  dealing 
with  Nestorius,  the  Vandals  were  conquering  Africa  ; 
that  during  the  interval  between  the  Councils  of  Ephesus 
and  Chalcedon,  the  Franks  had  passed  the  Rhine,  and 
the  Saxons  had  begun  their  descents  upon  Britain  ;  that 
in  the  year  of  the  Council  of  Chalcedon  one  of  the 
decisive  battles  of  the  world  was  fought,  and  Attila  was 
defeated  by  Aetius  and  Theodoric  upon  the  field  of 
Chalons  ?  Perhaps  we  do  remember  that  while  St.  Leo 
was  protesting  so  energetically  against  the  decrees  of 
Chalcedon  which  made  Constantinople  supreme  in  the 
East,  he  was  sent  on  a  mission  to  Attila  to  turn  him 
from  his  purpose  of  destroying  Rome,  and  that  he  suc- 
ceeded; but  are  we  so  sure,  without  looking  up  the 
chronology,  that  it  was  in  the  pontificate  of  Leo,  that 
Genseric  the  Vandal  took  and  plundered  the  eternal 
city  ?  And  yet  the  secular  and  the  ecclesiastical  history 
are  connected  more  closely  than  might  appear  at  first 
sight. 

The  ruinous  policy  of  the  government,  which  destroyed 
all  political  freedom,  ground  down  its  subjects  by  tax- 
ation, reduced  the  free  tillers  of  the  soil  to  the  position 
of  serfs  fixed  to  the  land,  and  prevented  their  entering 
the  army,  lest  their  capitation  and  land-tax  should  be 
lost,  made  it  necessary  to  fill  up  the  armies  with  the 


From  Co7istantine  to  the  Reformation.       97 

bands  of  barbarians.  These  barbarians  were  astute  pol- 
iticians as  well  as  able  soldiers  ;  they  had  a  keen  eye  to 
their  own  interest  ;  and  they  understood  that  so  long 
as  they  kept  themselves  from  absorption  into  the  mass 
of  the  subjects  of  the  empire,  they  were  the  arbiters  of 
its  destinies.  They  were  Arians,  therefore,  partly  at 
least  for  political  reasons,  to  keep  up  the  distinction 
between  the  Barbarian  and  the  Roman  ;  and  while  they 
were  willing  to  take  service  under  the  empire,  they  were 
just  as  willing  to  have  a  grievance  against  it,  when  ad- 
vantage was  to  be  gained  thereby.  And  so  it  came  to 
pass  that  the  orthodox  empire  depended  for  its  defence 
upon  those  whom  its  laws  subjected  to  persecution, 
whenever  it  was  strong  enough,  or  foolish  enough  to 
persecute  them.  Under  these  circumstances  it  was  the 
crowning  act  of  folly  in  the  weak  and  foolish  Honorius, 
after  the  murder  of  Stilicho,  his  ablest  statesman  and 
best  general,  to  publish  a  decree  excluding  all  but 
Catholics  from  the  service  of  the  State.  That  decree, 
followed  up  by  an  infamous  and  senseless  massacre  of 
the  wives  and  children  of  barbarian  soldiers,  threw  thirty 
thousand  veterans  into  revolt,  and  opened  the  road  to 
Rome  for  Alaric,  and  the  road  to  Gaul  and  Spain  for 
Ataulph.*  So,  too,  the  rigorous  laws  against  the  Don- 
atists  in  Africa,  who  boasted  four  hundred  bishops,  and 
several  thousand  clergy,  made  the  members  of  that 
schismatical   communion  look  upon  Genseric  and  his 

*  Gibbon.  Ch.  XXXI. 
7 


98      Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Vandals  as  deliverers,  and  materially  assisted  in  the 
Vandal  conquest  of  Africa.*  Once  the  barriers  were 
broken  down,  the  barbarian  irruptions  continued,  until 
they  had  settled  themselves  over  the  whole  West,  and 
established  new  kingdoms,  which,  while  nominally  a 
part  of  the  empire,  were  really  independent  of  it,  and  of 
a  different  faith.  These  movements  affected  the  impe- 
rial city  most  disastrously  ;  sieges,  plunderings,  and  the 
loss  of  the  annual  tribute  of  grain  from  Africa,  dimin- 
ished its  wealth  and  its  population  ;  and  Rome  entered 
upon  its  period  of  material  decline  just  at  the  time  that 
its  bishop  was  pressing  his  claim  of  supremacy  most  vig- 
orously— a  claim  which  had  no  meaning  for  the  barba- 
rians of  the  Arian  faith,  and  which  they  would  take 
good  care  should  not  be  practically  acknowledged  by 
their  Catholic  subjects. 

It  is  idle  to  say,  when  this  was  the  situation,  that 
the  Roman  see  obtained  its  credit  and  its  power  from 
the  gratitude  of  the  barbarians,  whose  guidance  it  took 
upon  itself  during  this  formative  period  of  modern 
history.  The  Goths  in  Italy  were  not  converted  from 
Arianism  by  Rome,  they  were  exterminated  by  Justin- 
ian ;  the  Goths  in  Spain  were  not  converted  by 
Rome,  they  were  converted  by  the  native  Catholic 
clergy ;  the  Franks  were  not  converted  by  Rome.  It 
was  not  until  Augustine  was  sent  to  England  by 
Gregory  the  Great,  that  Rome  began  to  have  any 
real  influence  in  the  new  life  of  the  West. 

*  Gibbon.  Ch.  XXXIII. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.        99 

The  real  power  which  advanced  the  credit  of  the 
Roman  see  during  these  ages  was  the  reaction  against 
the  Byzantine  despotism  over  the  Eastern  Church  ; 
and  this  is  the  explanation  of  the  fact  that  although 
the  new  map  of  Europe  had  been  marked  out,  in  out- 
line at  least,  by  the  year  500,  the  Roman  see  clung  to 
the  eastern  connection  until  the  first  half  of  the  eighth 
century.  I  have  shown  in  the  previous  lecture  what 
the  imperial  policy  was  towards  the  Eastern  Church, 
and  what  entanglements  resulted  from  it.  In  the 
political  or  diplomatic  struggle  between  the  Church 
and  the  Emperors,  in  which  the  Emperors  endeavored 
to  make  the  Church  subservient  to  the  imperial  policy, 
or  to  adjust  the  situation  to  the  necessities  of  the 
empire,  and  the  Church  strove  to  retain  its  autonomy 
as  a  witness  to  the  faith  and  a  legislator  in  the  affairs 
of  religion,  the  Bishop  of  Rome  became,  so  to  speak, 
the  constitutional  head  of  the  opposition  ;  and  the  East 
was  willing  to  exalt  his  authority,  as  a  counterpoise  to 
that  of  the  Emperor,  to  any  extent  short  of  acknow- 
ledging that  the  primacy  implied  a  supremacy.  Against 
the  supremacy  it  was  firm  and  decided  from  the  be- 
ginning ;  and  yet  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  because  of  his 
influence  in  the  affairs  of  the  Eastern  Church,  was  a 
much  more  considerable  person  in  the  opinion  of  the 
East,  than  he  was  in  that  of  the  West.  We  may 
therefore  take  it  as  a  matter  of  course,  that  Rome  would 
continually  be  making  the  claim  of  supremacy,  and 
that  the  East  would  quietly  ignore  it — accepting  its 


loo    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

authority  and  influence,  so  far  as  it  agreed  with  the 
Patriarchal  theory  of  the  Eastern  Church,  and  was 
founded  on  those  ideas  of  Catholic  unity,  according  to 
which  the  concurrence  of  the  five  patriarchates  was 
required  for  the  settlement  of  any  affair  of  ecumenical 
importance. 

For  this  idea  of  Catholic  unity  was  the  strength  of 
the  Church  in  these  eventful  times  ;  and  that  all  the 
more,  because,  though  the  empire  was  nominally  one, 
it  was  in  practical  effect  twofold.  The  five  patri- 
archates covered  both  empires,  and  therefore,  when 
the  Eastern  Church  was  thrown  into  disorder  by  the 
imperial  policy,  it  was  enabled  to  call  in  the  West  to 
arbitrate  between  parties,  or  to  throw  its  weight  into 
the  scale,  on  the  ground  that  Catholic  unity  must  be 
preserved,  not  only  in  the  East,  but  between  the  East 
and  the  West.  How  favorable  this  was  to  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  Roman  see  is  evident  at  a  glance  ;  but 
at  the  same  time  it  was  a  deduction  from  the  true 
theory  of  Catholic  unity,  as  realized  in  the  primitive 
Church.  It  agreed  also  with  the  theory  of  the  imperi- 
alist Church  of  the  East,  so  that  it  was  very  easy  for 
the  different  parties  to  concur  in  common  action  while 
each  was  acting  under  different  ideas.  There  are 
many  times  in  history,  when  ideas  in  this  way  overlap 
or  interlace,  and  we  cannot  understand  the  course  of 
events  unless  we  give  due  attention  to  this  fact. 

Thus  when  Innocent  I.  refused  to  hold  communion 
with  Arsacius,  or  Atticus  of  Constantinople  during  the 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      loi 

life  time  of  St.  John  Chrysostom,  or  until  his  name, 
after  his  death,  was  inserted  in  the  diptychs,  he  might 
hold,  and  his  successors  might  assert  that  he  acted  as 
judge  in  the  appeal  of  Chrysostom,  according  to  the 
Sardican  canons,  or  according  to  the  supposed  inherent 
powers  of  the  see  of  St.  Peter.  The  act  would  bear 
that  interpretation  at  Rome.  But  in  the  East  it  would 
be  rememberea  that  such  action  was  according  to  the 
ancient  custom  of  the  Church,  by  which  all  bishops 
had  the  right  and  duty  of  refusing  the  communion  of 
those  who  were  in  schism  or  heresy  ;  and  therefore 
that  submission  to  the  demands  of  Innocent  was  no 
acknowledgment  of  his  supremacy  or  appellate  juris- 
diction, but  a  recognition  of  right  and  justice  to  the 
persecuted  saint.  Or  again,  when  the  patriarchal 
system  was  fully  established,  although  the  inferior 
bishops  had  not  the  same  influence  they  had  in  the 
primitive  Church,  yet,  on  that  theory,  what  Innocent 
did  was  only  what  any  of  the  patriarchs  had  full  right 
to  do,  and  what  it  was  his  duty  to  do  when  circum- 
stances required. 

Now  it  needs  to  be  remembered  that  in  the  situation 
of  the  Eastern  Church,  as  in  the  primitive  Church,  the 
only  way  to  right  a  wrong,  or  to  correct  an  error  of  any 
magnitude,  was  by  such  action  as  this  to  establish  a 
schism,  to  throw  the  responsibility  of  the  schism  upon 
the  wrong-doer,  and  then  to  appeal  to  the  five  Patri- 
archates in  General  Council  assembled,  or  by  other 
concurrent  action,  to  determine  the  issue  so  raised,  and 


I02     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

to  labor  for  the  restoration  of  unity  by  the  correction  of 
the  wrong.  The  remedy  was  heroic,  because  the 
Emperor  became  a  party  in  the  case,  and  there  were 
times  when  it  would  have  been  better  not  to  have  applied 
it — when  the  wrong  would  have  righted  itself  had  it 
been  letalone  ;  but  the  issue  once  raised  must  be  carried 
through  to  the  end,  unless  the  Eastern  Church  would 
be  tied,  hand  and  foot,  to  the  Imperial  throne.  This 
consideration  will  enable  us  to  take  a  different  view  of 
the  ecclesiastical  history  of  the  East  from  that  which 
has  been  current  since  Gibbon  set  himself  to  belittle  it. 
It  was  a  battle  of  giants,  not  of  pigmies.  It  was  not 
only  the  contest  for  the  integrity  of  the  faith  in  Christ 
against  political  expediency  ;  but  it  was  the  arena  of 
the  only  political  activity  allowed  to  the  subjects  of  a 
despotic  government,  because  the  Church  only  had 
reserved  rights  which  the  Emperor  could  not  take  away  ; 
and  therefore  it  manifested  oftentimes,  with  the  zeal  of 
the  Christian,  the  passion  and  violence  of  a  political 
struggle.  The  evil  was  in  the  system — in  the  union  of 
Church  and  State — rather  than  in  the  men.  And  be- 
cause there  were  evils  to  be  combated,  the  strong  men, 
the  great  men,  sought  to  accumulate  power  in  their 
hands,  that  they  might  combat  them  successfully.  That 
was  true  of  the  ablest  and  best  emperors  ;  it  was  true 
also  of  the  ablest  and  best  ecclesiastics.  The  fact  is, 
that  in  an  abnormal  situation,  men  on  both  sides  are 
sometimes  right  when  they  are  wrong,  and  wrong  when 
they  are  right.     Let  us  do  justice  to  the  motives  and 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     103 


conduct  of  Marcian,  and  Leo,  and  Zeno,  and  Anastasius, 
and  Heraclius,  and  Leo  the  Isaurian  ;  and  let  us  also  do 
justice  to  the  motives  and  conduct  of  Innocent  and 
Celestine,  and  St.  Leo,  of  Cyril  of  Alexandria  and  John 
of  Antioch,  of  Acacius  of  Constantinople  and  Sophro- 
nius  of  Jerusalem,  of  John  of  Damascus,  and  Theodore 
of  the  Studium. 

All  these  considerations  must  enter  into  the  study  of 
this  portion  of  the  history  of  the  Eastern  Church,  and 
then  the  true  Catholic  course  of  that  history  may  be 
traced  amid  all  the  eddies  and  counter-currents  of  the 
times.  Let  it  be  granted,  in  the  case  of  Nestorius  and 
the  Council  of  Ephesus,  that  St.  Cyril  was  actuated  by 
a  desire  to  humble  the  see  of  Constantinople,  which  had 
been  exalted  above  Alexandria,  and  that  he  displayed 
a  violent  and  arbitrary  temper  at  the  Council  of  Ephe- 
sus ;  still  it  is  true  that  Nestorianism  was  a  heresy  which 
the  Church  must  repudiate,  that  it  was  the  duty  of  St. 
Cyril  to  oppose  it  by  breaking  off  communion  with 
Nestorius,  as  well  as  by  writing  against  him ;  that  it 
was  his  duty  also,  to  present  the  issue  to  the  Church  for 
settlement,  and  that  it  was,  as  a  part  of  that  duty,  his 
duty  to  call  the  Bishop  of  Rome  to  the  common  adju- 
dication. Let  it  be  granted  that  Celestine  treated  the 
matter  as  an  appeal  to  himself,  upon  the  new  theory 
that  was  current  at  Rome  ;  still  it  is  true  upon  Catholic 
principles,  that  he  had  a  part  in  the  adjudication,  and 
that  the  Eastern  Church  accepted  his  concurrence,  and 
quietly  set  aside  his  assumptions. 


I04    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  a7id  Political 


In  this  connection  it  is  important  to  notice,  that 
although  the  controversy  concerning  the  reception  of 
the  Council  of  Ephesus  was  long  and  bitter  in  the  East, 
the  Bishop  of  Rome  took  no  particular  part  in  it.  His 
function  was  discharged  when  he  had  assisted  at  it  by 
the  presence  of  his  legates,  and  concurred  in  its  decrees 
after  they  were  published.  In  due  time  the  Eastern 
Patriarchates  also  concurred,  and  the  ecumenical  char- 
acter of  the  Council  was  determined  by  that  concurrence. 

The  relation  of  St.  Leo  to  the  Council  of  Chalcedon 
further  illustrates  our  position.  Eutyches  was  the 
favorite  of  Chrysaphius,  the  eunuch  who  had  most 
influence  with  the  weak  Emperor  Theodosius  II.,  and 
who  is  said  to  have  had  in  mind  the  deposition  of 
Flavian,  the  Bishop  of  Constantinople,  and  the  eleva- 
tion of  Eutyches  in  his  place.  The  condemnation  of 
the  Eutychian  heresy,  therefore,  was  mixed  up  with  a 
miserable  court  intrigue,  in  which  all  the  influence  and 
power  of  the  empire  was  on  the  side  of  the  heretic. 
Dioscorus,  the  Bishop  of  Alexandria,  lent  himself  to 
the  schemes  of  Chrysaphius,  and  was  put  at  the  head 
of  a  second  Council  of  Ephesus,  which  had  been  called 
on  the  appeal  of  Eutyches,  with  instructions  to  con- 
demn Nestorianism  afresh — that  is,  of  course,  the 
party  opposed  to  Eutyches.  St.  Leo  was  invited,  up- 
on Catholic  principles,  to  take  his  part  in  the 
determination  of  the  question ;  but  he  received  the 
notification  as  an  appeal,  upon  the  principles  current  at 
Rome.    He  conducted  himself  with  consummate  states- 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     105 

manship  and  ability,  as  well  as  with  thorough  honesty  ; 
his  orthodoxy  was  unimpeachable,  and  his  celebrated 
letter  to  Flavian  was  worthy  to  be  made  a  standard  of 
doctrine.  The  "Robber-Synod"  of  Ephesus  had  the 
temerity  to  refuse  to  hear  it  read,  and  to  try  to  compel 
the  legates  of  Leo  to  assent  to  the  condemnation  of 
Flavian  as  well  as  to  the  restoration  of  Eutyches.  An 
imperial  rescript  confirmed  this  council  ;  but  the 
Church  immediately  repudiated  it,  and  the  cause  of 
Leo,  as  well  as  of  Flavian,  became  the  cause  of  ortho- 
doxy against  imperialism.  Leo  demanded  a  true 
General  Council  to  be  held  in  Italy,  and  obtained  the 
concurrence  of  the  Western  Emperor  in  the  demand  ; 
but  just  at  this  juncture  Theodosius  died,  the  eunuch 
Chrysaphius  was  put  to  death  for  his  manifold  iniquities, 
and  the  orthodox  Pulcheria  called  Marcian  to  the 
throne  of  the  East  as  her  husband.  The  General 
Council  was  held,  but  not  in  Italy ;  it  was  convened  at 
Chalcedon  ;  the  legates  of  Leo  presided  amid  the 
acclamations  of  those  who  remembered  the  proceed- 
ings of  two  years  before,  and  who  therefore  identified 
his  cause  with  their  own  ;  Dioscorus  was  condemned 
for  his  part  in  those  proceedings  ;  the  faith  was  defined 
against  Eutyches  ;  the  letter  of  Leo  to  Flavian  was 
read  and  approved  ;  and  the  name  of  Leo  was  saluted 
with  the  appellation  of  Patriarch. 

But  although  the  state  of  matters  just  at  this  time 
created  an  enthusiasm  in  favor  of  Leo,  the  Emperor 
and  the  Eastern  Church  were  not  unmindful   of  the 


io6    Christ ciidoiii  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Roman  pretensions,  or  incautious  enough  to  acknow- 
ledge them.  Six  years  before  the  Council  of  Chalcedon, 
the  Western  Emperor  had  granted  the  decree  before 
mentioned,  giving  to  St.  Leo  the  supreme  appellate 
authority  over  the  West  ;  and  in  view  of  that  decree 
(as  the  Council  expressly  said  in  their  synodical  letter 
to  Leo),  the  Emperor  Marcian  proposed,  and  the 
Council  enacted,  those  celebrated  canons  spoken  of  in 
the  last  lecture,  which  settled  the  hierarchy  of  the 
Eastern  Church,  and  the  patriarchal  authority  of  the 
Bishop  of  Constantinople.  It  was  of  no  avail  that  Leo 
rejected  them,  and  opposed  them  with  all  his  might  ; 
they  are  the  law  of  the  Eastern  Church  to  this  day. 

I  have  already  remarked  upon  the  disturbances  in 
the  East  after  the  Council  of  Chalcedon — how  the 
nations  and  races  which  were  oppressed  by  the  empire, 
and  were  not  Greek  or  Latin,  adopted  Nestorianism  or 
Eutychianism  as  their  badge  of  discontent,  and  how 
Zeno  the  Emperor  and  Acacius  the  Bishop  of  Con- 
stantinople endeavored  to  allay  the  dissensions  by 
publishing  the  Henoticon.  Acacius  was  probably  the 
ablest  politician  who  ever  occupied  the  see  of  Con- 
stantinople, and  he  advanced  its  pretensions  to  the 
greatest  height.  He  held  communion  with  those  who 
accepted  the  Henoticon  (which  was  not  unorthodox); 
among  others  with  Peter  Mongus  of  Alexandria,  and  he 
had  compromised  the  legates  of  Pope  Felix  IIL,  by  in- 
ducing them  to  be  present  at  a  service  at  which  the 
pame  of  Peter  was  recited  in  the  diptychs.     For  this 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     107 

Felix  excommunicated  him,  and  declared  him  to  be 
deposed ;  whereupon  Acacius  publicly  removed  the 
Pope's  name  from  the  diptychs.  A  schism  now  began 
which  lasted  thirty-five  years.  It  materially  increased 
the  troubles  of  the  Emperor  Anastasius  ;  it  enabled 
Pope  Gelasius,  who  was  a  worthy  successor  of  St.  Leo, 
to  compare  the  Pontifical  with  the  Imperial  preroga- 
tive, and  so  to  advance  the  Roman  claim  another  step  ; 
it  consigned  Pope  Anastasius,  Gelasius'  successor,  to 
immortal  infamy  in  the  pages  of  Dante,  for  a  disposi- 
tion to  leniency  ;  it  gave  Pope  Symmachus  an  oppor- 
tunity to  console  himself  for  his  subjection  to  the 
Gothic  King  Theodoric,  by  exalting  himself  above  the 
Emperor  ;  and  it  was  healed  by  the  Emperor  Justin's 
command  to  remove  the  name  of  Acacius,  now  de- 
ceased, from  the  diptychs. 

Here  again,  the  political  explains  the  ecclesiastical 
history.  The  Bishop  of  Rome  at  this  time  was  under 
the  barbarian  Odoacer,  and  the  Arian  Gothic  King 
Theodoric,  and  it  was  much  to  their  interest  that  there 
should  be  a  schism  between  the  Catholics  of  the  East 
and  of  the  West.  They  were  nominally  vassals  of  the 
Emperor  at  Constantinople  ;  but  they  had  no  desire 
that  he  should  interfere  in  their  affairs  ;  and  so  long  as 
the  schism  lasted  they  were  secure  on  that  side — at 
least  Theodoric  was.  You  remember  the  saying 
attributed  to  Ataulph,  the  founder  of  the  Gothic 
monarchy  in  Gaul,  that  he  once  aspired,  in  the  confi- 
dence of  valor  and  victory,  to  blot   out  the  name  of 


1 08    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Rome  ;  but  when  he  reflected  that  laws  were  necessary 
to  a  state,  he  determined  to  maintain  the  Roman 
Empire.  This  was  the  policy  of  all  the  more  en- 
lightened Goths.  They  saw  that  they  had  not  the 
experience  or  ability  to  manage  the  vast  administrative 
and  legal  machinery  of  the  empire,  and  yet  that  with- 
out it,  they  could  not  rule  their  Roman  subjects.  They 
continued,  therefore,  the  fiction  of  the  empire,  even  in 
their  own  independent  kingdoms,  for  the  sake  of  the 
civilization  that  depended  on  it,  and  that  which  they 
won  by  the  sword,  they  were  willing  to  legitimize  by 
the  imperial  permission  to  retain.  When  the  last 
Western  Emperor  was  deposed  (A.  D.  476)  the  in- 
signia of  sovereignty  were  sent  to  Constantinople, 
with  the  profession  of  allegiance  to  the  Emperor  there. 
It  was  Zeno,  the  author  of  the  Henoticon,  who  received 
them.  Theodoric  obtained  Zeno's  consent  to  dispossess 
Odoacer  of  Italy,  and  to  hold  it  as  a  kingdom  depend- 
ent on  the  East.  The  permission  was  a  mere  pretence  ; 
for  Theodoric  paid  no  tribute,  and  the  Emperor  was 
unable  to  demand  any  ;  but  it  served  its  purpose  to  give 
Theodoric  a  legitimate  title  so  long  as  he  could  hold 
the  country. 

But  Theodoric  knew  very  well  that  his  title  would 
not  hold,  if  the  Emperor  felt  strong  enough  to  dispossess 
him,  and  could  count  on  the  loyalty  of  the  Catholics  of 
Italy,  and  their  hatred  of  an  Arian  ruler,  and  therefore, 
as  I  said,  it  was  to  his  interest  that  there  should  be  a 
schism  between  the  East  and  the  West.     The  politics 


Prom  Constantine  to  the  Reformatiofi.      109 

of  the  time  entered  into  the  internal  affairs  of  the 
Roman  see.  The  dispute  between  Symmachus  and 
Laurentius,  at  the  close  of  the  fifth  century,  was  con- 
nected with  a  Byzantine  intrigue.  When  Zeno  died 
and  Anastasius  ascended  the  throne  (A.D.  49i)> 
Theodoric  sent  Festus,  a  noble  Roman,  to  Constanti- 
nople, to  solicit  his  confirmation  as  King  of  Italy. 
Festus  resided  at  Constantinople  some  time  as  Theod- 
oric's  ambassador,  and  while  there  he  entered  into 
some  engagement  with  Anastasius  to  procure  the 
Bishop  of  Rome's  consent  to  the  Henoticon,  and  so  to 
heal  the  schism.  On  the  vacancy  of  the  see,  therefore, 
while  the  people  and  clergy  elected  Symmachus,  a 
party  of  whom  Festus  was  the  head  set  up  Laurentius. 
It  was  a  political  quarrel,  disguised  as  a  religious  one, 
and  was  carried  on  with  great  acrimony,  and  not  with- 
out bloodshed.  Theodoric  was  appealed  to  ;  he  decided 
that  the  bishop  who  had  the  greatest  number  of  suf- 
frages and  the  prior  consecration,  should  hold  the  see. 
The  decision  was  in  favor  of  Symmachus.  The  party 
of  Laurentius,  which  included  the  consul  and  a  large 
part  of  the  senate,  then  accused  Symmachus  of  heinous 
crimes.  Theodoric  referred  the  charges  to  a  Council 
of  Italian  bishops,  whom  he  summoned  to  meet  in 
Rome.  The  Council  evaded  an  inquiry  by  deciding 
that  the  Pope,  as  such,  was  free  from  human  censure, 
leaving  the  whole  to  the  judgment  of  God.  It  provided, 
however,  that  the  clergy  who  had  taken  part  against 
Symmachus  should  be  pardoned  on  making  satisfaction. 


1 1 0    Christe7ido7n  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Theodoric  confirmed  the  decree,  and  restored  to  Sym- 
machus  the  temporalities  of  the  Church,  which  had 
been  sequestered  pending  the  inquiry. 

It  was  in  connection  with  these  events  that  Ennodius, 
Bishop  of  Pavia,  in  a  treatise  defending  the  Council  just 
mentioned,  advanced  the  proposition  that  the  Bishop  of 
Rome  was  exempt  from  all  earthly  judgment,  because 
he  was  made  holy  by  the  possession  of  the  see  of  St. 
Peter.  The  moral  ground  of  the  assertion  has  been  too 
sadly  negatived  by  the  conduct  of  Popes  in  later  ages  ; 
but  as  a  proposition  in  Canon  Law,  as  canon  law  was 
understood  at  Rome,  it  had  some  plausibility.  It  was 
a  maxim  of  the  same  order  as  "the  king  can  do  no 
wrong."  It  implied  no  personal  infallibility,  no  moral 
innocence  ;  it  implied  merely  that  there  was  no 
canonical  or  legal  tribunal  before  which  the  Pope 
could  be  compelled  to  plead.  It  put,  as  Gelasius  had 
done,  the  Pope  on  an  equality  with  the  Emperor  in 
this  respect.  By  the  imperial  and  ecclesiastical  laws, 
interpreted  as  they  were  at  Rome,  the  Bishop  of  Rome, 
as  the  ultimate  appellate  authority  in  the  Church,  had 
none  to  whom  to  appeal,  and  therefore  none  to  do  him 
justice  upon  earth.  Damasus  had  once,  for  a  similar 
reason,  asked  as  a  special  privilege  that  he  be  permitted 
to  plead  his  cause  before  the  Emperor  in  person  ;  but 
fortunately  for  the  Roman  see,  there  was  no  record 
that  his  request  had  been  granted,  and  it  was  possible 
to  argue  that  there  was  no  earthly  tribunal  to  which 
the  Bishopof  Rome  was  amenable.     The  Sixth  General 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      1 1 1 

Council,  by  the  condemnation  of  Honorius  as  a  Monoth- 
elite,  supplied  the  omission  ;  but  this  was  before  the 
time  of  Honorius.  That  such  an  argument  as  that  of 
Ennodius  should  be  made  at  Rome  was  natural.  It 
was  unfortunate,  however,  that  it  should  need  to  be 
supported  by  such  documents  as  the  legend  of  Pope 
Marcellinus  and  the  Council  of  Sinuessa,  which.  Dr. 
Dollinger  informs  us,  was  forged,  with  other  fables  of 
the  same  sort,  at  this  time  and  in  this  connection. 

Symmachus,  who  died  in  514,  was  succeeded  by 
Hormisdas,  and  in  518  Justin  became  Emperor  in 
place  of  Anastasius.  He  was  severely  orthodox  ;  the 
Henoticon  was  repudiated,  the  eastern  sees  were  placed 
in  the  hands  of  those  who  had  a  right  to  them,  the 
demands  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome  were  listened  to,  and 
the  name  of  Acacius  was  removed  from  the  diptychs. 
The  Emperor  seemed  too  desirous  to  please  the 
Catholics  of  Italy,  and  Theodoric  took  the  alarm.  He 
had  reason  for  uneasiness  ;  for  within  a  few  years, 
Clovis,  the  only  orthodox  prince  of  the  age,  had  led 
his  victorious  Franks  against  the  Visigoths  of  Gaul, 
because  "  it  grieved  him  that  these  Arians  possessed 
its  fairest  provinces,"  Justin,  too,  dismissed  from  the 
service  all  heretics  but  the  Gothic  mercenaries,  whom 
he  was  not  yet  strong  enough  to  proscribe  ;  and  there 
were  dark  rumors  of  conspiracies  and  uprisings  in  Italy 
in  favor  of  a  restoration  of  the  now  Catholic  and 
orthodox  empire.  Theodoric  determined  to  take  the 
initiative.     He  disarmed  the  whole  Roman  population  ; 


1 1 2     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

he  arrested  and  put  to  death  several  of  their  principal 
men  ;  and  he  sent  John,  Bishop  of  Rome,  who  had 
succeeded  Hormisdas,  to  Constantinople  to  demand 
the  same  freedom  of  religion  for  the  Arians  in  the 
East,  which  he  had  accorded  to  the  Catholics  in  the 
West.  It  was  the  first  time  a  Bishop  of  Rome  had 
ever  visited  Constantinople,  and  he  was  received  with 
unbounded  honor  ;  but  he  was  probably  lukewarm, 
and  certainly  unsuccessful  in  his  mission,  and  on  his 
return  Theodoric  forgot  the  argument  of  Ennodius  ;  he 
threw  John  into  prison,  and  kept  him  there  until  he  died. 

Shortly  after  this  Theodoric  himself  died.  His  king- 
dom speedily  fell  into  disorder.  Justinian  became 
Emperor,  and  his  terrible  general  Belisarius  was  sent  to 
restore  the  empire  in  the  West.  He  subdued  first  the 
Vandal  kingdom  in  Africa,  and  then  turned  his  arms 
against  Italy.  Theodatus,  the  Gothic  king,  sent 
Agapetus,  Bishop  of  Rome,  to  Constantinople  to  avert 
the  storm.  Justinian  deposed  the  Bishop  of  Constanti- 
nople at  his  request,  and,  as  Agapetus  died  in  that  city, 
he  celebrated  his  funeral  with  great  magnificence  ;  but 
the  war  went  on.  In  a  year  Justinian  was  master  of 
Rome,  and  in  a  few  years  of  Italy.  The  Bishop  of  Rome 
was  a  subject  of  the  Eastern  Empire  ;  and  the  theory 
of  Ennodius  was  to  be  put  to  the  test  under  new  condi- 
tions, by  the  behaviour  of  the  nominee  of  the  Empress 
Theodora,  the  unhappy  Vigilius. 

It  was  a  great  fall  from  St.  Leo  to  Vigilius.  The 
moral  force  of  the  Roman  see  deteriorated  rapidly  amid 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      113 

the  political  intrigues  and  strife  of  parties,  Gothic  and 
Roman,  from  Symmachus  down.  It  kept  pace  with  the 
material  decay  of  the  city.  Vigilius,  who  had  repre- 
sented Rome  at  Constantinople,  became  bishop,  it  is 
said,  by  an  intrigue  with  the  Empress,  by  which  he 
agreed  to  acknowledge  the  Eutychians.  Silverius  was 
banished  to  make  room  for  him ;  Theodora  demanded 
the  fulfilment  of  the  contract  and  he  obeyed.  But 
there  was  no  one  to  mete  out  to  him  the  measure  his 
predecessors  had  meted  out  to  Acacius,  and  he  is  reck- 
oned among  the  legitimate  Popes.  His  punishment 
came  in  a  different  way.  Justinian  was  bent  upon 
another  of  those  schemes  of  concession  which  seemed 
so  promising  and  proved  so  abortive.  He  had  been 
persuaded  that  the  Monophysites  would  return  to  the 
Church,  if  certain  writings  of  Theodoret  and  Ibas  of 
Edessa,  and  Theodore  of  Mopsuesta,  all  of  whom  were 
long  since  dead,  were  repudiated.  Ibas  and  Theodoret 
had  been  admitted  to  the  Council  of  Chalcedon,  and 
both  Monophysites  and  Catholics  understood  that  to 
condemn  them  would  be  to  condemn  the  Council  of 
Chalcedon ;  but  Justinian  was  determined  to  proceed. 
The  traditional  policy  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome  was  to 
head  the  opposition,  and  Vigilius  was  disposed  to  follow 
it.  But  he  had  to  deal  with  Justinian,  and  he  was  not 
St.  Leo.  He  was  summoned  to  Constantinople  ;  he 
refused  to  condemn  the  Three  Chapters,  as  they  were 
called  ;  he  excommunicated  the  patriarch  of  Constan- 
tinople, and  the  patriarch  of  Constantinople  excommu- 


114   Christendom  Ecclesiastical  aiid  Political 

nicated  him  ;  in  a  short  time  he  changed  his  mind  ;  he 
was  reconciled  to  the  patriarch,  and  pledged  himself  to 
the  Emperor  to  carry  out  his  wishes.  By  his  Jjidicatuvt 
he  condemned  the  Three  Chapters  "  without  prejudice 
to  the  Council  of  Chalcedon,"  and  the  western  bishops 
at  once  withdrew  from  his  communion.  He  then  re- 
voked his  yudicaticjn,  and  requested  the  Emperor  to 
summon  a  Council.  The  Emperor  summoned  a  Council 
— the  Fifth  General — which  condemned  the  Three 
Chapters,  without  involving  the  Council  of  Chalcedon. 
It  was,  as  I  said  in  the  last  lecture,  a  piece  of  diplomacy, 
by  which  the  bishops  avoided  a  rupture  with  the 
Emperor.  The  writings  were  worthy  of  censure  ;  but 
Theodoret  and  Ibas  had  purged  themselves  at  the 
Council,  and,  as  Dupin  remarks,  the  Church  was  thrown 
into  confusion  about  a  matter  of  small  importance.  But 
our  business  is  with  Vigilius.  He  refused  to  attend  the 
Council,  and  fearing  violence,  he  took  sanctuary  in  a 
church.  When  the  Council  condemned  the  Chapters, 
he  issued  a  Constitutum,  censuring  the  writings,  but 
defending  the  authors.  At  length,  some  six  months 
after,  having  been  exiled  to  the  rock  of  Proconnesus, 
he  gave  in  his  adhesion  to  its  decrees,  and  was  permitted 
to  return  home,  but  died  on  the  passage. 

The  behaviour  of  Vigilius,  under  the  heavy  hand  of 
Justinian,  like  that  of  Liberius  under  Constantius,  while 
it  enables  us  to  gauge  more  accurately  the  vaunted  or- 
thodoxy of  the  bishops  of  Rome  during  this  period, 
shows  us  against  what  odds  the  Eastern  Church  had  to 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      115 

contend  for  its  autonomy  and  integrity,  and  cannot  fail, 
amid  all  the  fatiguing  study  of  controversy  after  con- 
troversy, to  raise  our  esteem  for  that  great  and  much 
calumniated  communion.  Three  years  of  the  rapacity 
and  corruption  of  the  imperial  government  in  Italy  was 
enough  to  cure  the  Italians  of  their  desire  for  the  resto- 
ration of  the  empire  ;  and  when  Totila,  at  the  head  of 
only  five  thousand  Goths,*  raised  the  standard  of  revolt, 
the  cities  submitted  at  his  approach  ;  with  a  continually 
increasing  army  he  subdued  the  country,  and  laid  siege 
to  Rome,  which  he  reduced  by  famine.  It  is  with  a 
feeling  of  solemn  interest  that  we  read  the  two  or  three 
lines  of  history  which  tell  us  that  Totila  in  his  wrath 
expelled  the  whole  population  of  the  eternal  city,  and 
that  for  forty  days  Rome  lay  desolate  and  forsaken,  and 
without  inhabitants. t  It  was  in  the  year  546.  But  the 
Gothic  rule  had  passed  away.  Belisarius,  and  after  him 
Narses,  restored  the  supremacy  of  the  empire,  and  the 
Goths  were  literally  exterminated.  Their  place,  how- 
ever, was  speedily  supplied  by  the  Lombards,  who  like 
them  were  Arians  and  acknowledged  allegiance  neither 
to  the  Emperor  nor  to  the  patriarch  of  the  West, 
Their  frontier  line  ran  between  Padua  and  Ravenna, 
and  between  Florence  and  Rome,  and  the  country  they 
occupied  was  permanently  sundered  from  the  throne  of 
Constantinople,     But  Rome  still  continued  to  be  a  city 

*  Two  hundred  thousand  Goths  had  been  slaughtered  in  the  wars  with 
Belisarius. — Gibbon,  Ch. 

f  Gibbon,  Ch.  XLIII.  note  i6,  referring  to  Marcel,  in  Chron.     p.  54. 


1 1 6    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

of  the  Eastern  Empire  ;  it  was  subject  to  the  exarchs  ol 
Ravenna,  and  its  bishops,  confirmed  by  the  Emperor, 
governed  without  influence  and  without  opportunity, 
until  Gregory  the  Great  discovered  the  Saxons  in 
England. 

The  reign  of  Justinian,  within  which  occurred  the  five 
hundredth  year  from  the  crucifixion  and  resurrection  of 
our  blessed  Lord,  seems  to  me  to  divide  between  ancient 
and  mediaeval  history.  In  our  next  lecture  we  shall  be 
transferred  to  a  new  scene  and  new  actors.  If  the  con- 
jecture or  calculation  of  Gibbon  be  allowed,  there  was 
a  tremendous  clearing  of  the  stage  for  the  next  drama 
that  was  to  be  enacted  ;  for  he  estimates  that  in  that 
one  reign,  not  less  than  a  hundred  millions  of  human 
beings  perished  by  war,  by  pestilence  and  by  famine. 
But  the  continuity  of  history  was  not  broken.  The  old 
world  handed  over  to  the  new  the  great  facts  and  prin- 
ciples which  were  gradually,  amid  many  vicissitudes,  to 
transform  the  barbarian  hordes  into  the  Christian  and 
progressive  nations  of  the  modern  world.  The  Empire 
existed  in  the  East,  and  was  to  be  revived  in  the  West 
under  Charlemagne  and  his  successors.  The  Roman 
law  had  been  reduced  to  its  final  form,  not  only  as  the 
instrument  for  the  administration  of  justice  and  the 
ascertaining  of  rights,  but  as  the  text-book  of  govern- 
ment, in  which  the  imperial  power  asserted  its  suprem- 
acy in  Church  and  in  State,  and  as  the  principle  of 
resistance  to  the  Papacy,  when  the  Papal  theory  had 
been  fully  formulated.     And  the  Church,  with  its  Divine 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      117 

faith,  its  conscious  strength,  its  compact  organization, 
its  moral  and  spiritual  power,  was  none  the  less  able  to 
deal  with  the  new  order,  or  rather  the  new  disorder  of 
the  coming  ages,  that  it  had  been  moulded  into  a 
hierarchy  which  was  a  variation  from  its  primitive  sim- 
plicity, and  had  assumed  a  form  in  which  we  can 
recognize  much  that  belonged  to  the  imperialist  con- 
nection, and  which  is  not  to  be  imitated  or  reproduced 
among  ourselves.  It  was  the  Church  of  Christ  as  truly 
in  the  darkness  of  the  dark  ages,  as  in  the  light  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 


III. 

THE  CONVERSION  OF    THE    FRANKS. 


III. 

THE  CONVERSION  OF  THE  FRANKS. 


We  must  now  pass  over  from  Italy  into  Gaul  and 
Germany,  and  study  the  history  of  the  Church  in  its 
dealings  with  the  new  and  barbarous  races  from  whom 
sprang  modern  Europe.  The  first  thing  which  I  must 
ask  you  to  remember — and  I  must  ask  you  to  remember 
it  all  through  this  lecture — is,  that  when  we  speak  of 
the  Church  as  dealing  with  barbarous  races,  we  are  not 
to  conceive  of  the  members  of  the  Church  as  one  order 
of  beings,  and  of  the  barbarous  races  as  another  ;  as  if, 
for  example,  we  were  speaking  of  the  dealings  of  the 
people  of  the  United  States  with  the  Indian  tribes  of 
our  frontier  ;  but  that,  as  time  passed  on,  those  barbar- 
ous tribes  became  the  Church  itself  in  its  human  aspect ; 
they  were  themselves  the  laymen  and  the  priests  and 
the  bishops  of  the  Church  ;  they  were  called  to  the 
duties  and  responsibilities  of  the  Christian  profession 
and  the  Christian  priesthood  in  their  state  of  barbarism  ; 
and  therefore,  if  Christianity  in  the  times  succeeding 
the  overthrow  of  the  empire  by  the  barbarians,  seems 
to  wear  a  barbaric  aspect,  it  is  because  the  Divine 
grace  and  the  Divine  organization  are  working  in  and 


12  2    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

among  the  barbarians  by  means  of  the  barbarians 
themselves.  The  period  upon  which  we  are  now  enter- 
ing is  that  commonly  called  the  Dark  Ages  ;  and  I 
need  only  refer  you  to  Dr.  Maitland's  discursive  but 
masterly  essays  collected  into  the  volume  bearing  that 
title,  to  remind  you  that  there  was  light  in  the  dark 
ages  ;  and  that  the  popular  notion  of  them,  derived 
from  the  time  when  Mosheim  was  our  text-book  of 
Church  History,  and  Daubignc's  Reformation  was 
accepted  as  authentic  and  reliable,  is  wide  of  the  truth, 
and  must,  under  the  influence  of  the  new  school  of 
modern  history,  give  way  to  a  better  knowledge. 

In  the  year  486  Clovis  defeated  Syagrius,  the  last 
representative  of  the  Roman  dominion  in  Gaul,  and 
founded  the  kingdom  of  the  Franks.  The  events 
which  led  up  to  that  revolution  require  a  few  words. 

After  the  Empire  ceased  to  be  aggressive,  the  defence 
of  the  Gallic  frontier  against  the  inroads  of  the  German 
tribes  was  the  care  of  the  Western  Emperors.  It  was 
their  task  to  maintain  the  line  of  the  Rhine,  as  it  was 
that  of  the  Eastern  Emperors  to  maintain  the  line  of 
the  Danube.  In  this  they  were  successful  up  to  the 
fifth  century.  The  first  serious  invasions  of  the  Empire 
were  those  of  the  Goths  in  Eastern  Europe,  and  it 
might  have  appeared  that  the  East,  rather  than  the 
West,  would  succumb  to  the  attacks  made  upon  it. 
But  an  inspection  of  the  map  will  show  why  the  Goths 
did  not  succeed  in  overrunning  the  eastern  empire. 
The  East  Avas  deeply  indented  by  the  sea  j  its  cities 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     123 

were  upon  the  shores  and  islands  of  the  -^gean,  the 
Mediterranean  and  the  Adriatic,  and  on  the  Bosphorus 
and  the  Black  Sea,  and  its  maritime  commerce  could 
not  be  destroyed  by  the  barbarians.  The  Goths  were 
not  a  seafaring  people,  nor  were  they  able  to  reduce 
the  cities  which  they  could  not  blockade.  Though 
they  could  make  incursions  into  the  interior,  and 
obtain  tracts  of  devastated  and  abandoned  land  for 
settlements,  they  could  not  gain  the  supremacy  ;  they 
became  soldiers  of  the  Empire,  not  its  masters.  In  the 
West  it  was  different.  Italy  was  protected  in  the  same 
way  as  Macedonia  and  Thrace,  by  its  seaboard  and 
mountains,  and  the  barbarians  did  not  succeed  for  a 
long  time  in  making  permanent  settlements  there,  and 
then  only  in  the  northern  part.  But  the  wide  expanses 
of  open  country  in  Gaul  and  Spain  had  not  the  same 
natural  means  of  defence  against  them,  and  as  soon  as 
the  legions  were  withdrawn  for  the  defence  of  Italy, 
the  barbarians  came  to  stay. 

Gibbon  dates  the  fall  of  the  Western  Empire  from 
the  last  day  of  the  year  406.  On  that  day  the  remains 
of  the  vast  host  of  Radagaisus,  who  had  been  driven  by 
Stilicho  out  of  Italy  with  the  loss  of  their  leader,  made 
the  passage  of  the  Rhine,  and  poured  in  a  devastating 
torrent  over  the  Gallic  provinces,  burning  cities  and 
villages,  and  collecting  plunder,  until  their  march  was 
stopped  by  the  ocean.  They  then  turned  southward 
into  Spain,  where  they  founded  the  short-lived  king- 
doms of  the  Vandals  and  the  Sueves.     Six  years  after, 


1 24    Christejidovi  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

the  Visigoths  made  their  way  into  Gaul  under  Athaulf, 
and  fixed  themselves  in  Aquitaine,  west  of  the  Rhone, 
whence  they  also  passed  into  Spain.  About  the  same 
time  the  Burgundians  obtained  a  settlement  in  the 
district  to  which  they  have  given  their  name,  and  the 
Franks,  as  auxiliaries  of  the  Empire,  in  what  is  now 
Holland  and  Belgium.  In  475,  on  the  deposition  of  the 
last  Western  Emperor,  Odoacer  ceded  to  Euric  the 
Visigoth  all  the  country  he  possessed  between  the 
Alps  and  the  ocean,  and  in  486,  as  has  been  said,  Clovis 
defeated  Syagrius.  It  is  with  Clovis  and  the  Franks 
that  we  have  to  do  in  this  lecture. 

M.  Guizot,  in  his  lectures  on  the  history  of  civilization 
in  France,  has  pointed  out  the  causes  of  the  weakness 
of  Gaul  at  the  time  of  the  barbarian  invasions.  It  was 
the  same  there  as  everywhere  else  in  the  Empire. 
Despotism  at  one  end  of  the  social  scale,  and  slavery 
at  the  other,  fiscal  oppression,  and  the  jealousy  which 
excluded  from  the  army  both  the  cultivators  of  the 
soil  and  the  curiales  of  the  city,  had  destroyed  the 
patriotism  and  military  spirit  of  the  population,  and 
left  the  country  an  easy  prey  to  the  invaders,  when  the 
mercenary  legions  were  withdrawn.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  after  the  first  effects  of  the  invasions  had  passed 
away,  the  condition  of  the  common  people  improved 
under  the  barbarians,  and  that,  notwithstanding  the 
horrid  tale  of  crime,  of  violence  and  licentiousness, 
which  makes  up  the  history  of  court  and  camp  for  the 
succeeding  centuries,  the  population,  which  had  fallen 


From  Const antine  to  the  Reformation.     125 

back  under  imperial  oppression,  began  to  increase  as 
soon  as  that  oppression  was  removed.  There  was  no 
vitality  in  the  Empire,  and  the  people  were  content 
under  their  new  masters. 

But  if  there  was  no  vitality  in  the  Empire,  there  was- 
immense  vitality  in  the  Church  of  Gaul  during  this 
period.  In  the  fifth  century,  the  Gallic  Church — the 
Church  of  Sts.  Pothinus  and  St.  Irenaeus,  of  St.  Hilary 
and  St.  Prosper,  of  Sts.  Martin  and  Germanus  and 
Lupus,  of  Hilary  of  Aries,  and  Caesarius  and  Remigius 
— had  gathered  into  itself  all  the  intellectual  and  moral 
strength  and  earnestness  which  remained  in  the  Gaul 
of  the  decaying  Empire.  Of  the  ecclesiastical  authors 
of  this  century,  a  large  proportion,  perhaps  a  majority 
of  those  who  wrote  in  Latin,  were  natives  or  residents 
of  Gaul,  and  the  subjects  they  discussed  were  both 
theological  and  practical.  The  great  lights  of  the  age, 
St.  Augustine  and  St.  Jerome,  were  consulted  by  Gallic 
Christians  upon  the  interpretation  of  Scripture  and  the 
doctrines  of  the  Church.  The  Augustinian  doctrine  of 
grace  found  an  able  champion  in  Prosper  of  Aquitaine. 
While  Salvian  of  Marseilles  was  deploring  the  vices  and 
miseries  of  the  world,  and  sternly  admonishing  to  a 
Christian  life,  Vincent  of  Lerins  was  writing  his  Com- 
monitorium  against  heresy,  and  expounding  the  rule  of 
Catholic  tradition,  quod  semper,  ubiqiie,  et  ab  omnibus. 
Sidonius  Apollinaris,  Mamertus  Claudienus,  and 
Faustus  of  Riez  were  contemporaries,  and  while  the 
one  cultivated  literature,  and  wrote  lively  letters  and 


126    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

verses,  the  others  discussed  the  nature  of  the  soul ; 
and  Faustus  indulged  those  speculations  which  pro- 
duced the  Semi-Pelagian  controversy.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  the  sixth  century  flourished  Caesarius  of  Aries, 
whose  sermons  show  us  what  was  the  kind  of  preaching 
at  the  time — direct,  homely,  practical,  improving. 
All  the  remains  of  the  time  bear  witness  to  the  activity 
of  the  Church  of  Gaul,  and  to  the  spiritual  life  which 
pervaded  it.  The  Galilean  Liturgy  was  an  independent 
offshoot  of  the  Ephesine  family,  akin  to  that  which 
remains  as  the  Mozarabic — a  rich  and  varied  service, 
used  by  priests  and  people  to  edification,  and  offering 
the  public  worship  with  solemnity  and  reverence.  The 
Councils  of  the  age  maintained  discipline  and  good 
morals  ;  the  bishops  and  clergy  attended  zealously  to 
their  ecclesiastical  duties,  and  the  people  followed 
them  with  loyal  attachment  and  ready  obedience. 

To  this  Church  was  committed  in  the  Divine  order 
the  Christianizing  of  the  Franks,  While  the  bishops 
of  Rome  were  dealing  with  the  Eastern  Church  and 
Empire  in  pursuit  of  their  scheme  of  a  politico-ecclesi- 
astical supremacy,  the  Gallican  Church  was  doing  its 
proper  work  among  the  people  of  the  Gauls,  and  it  did 
not  cease  to  do  its  work  among  them,  when  the 
barbarians  became  their  masters.  To  understand  the 
difficulty  of  the  work,  imagine,  if  you  can,  the  United 
States  fallen  into  weakness,  possessed  of  a  decaying 
civilization,  and  overrun  and  conquered  by  the  Indian 
tribes  of  the  great  West.     Imagine  those  bands  of  un- 


Prom  Constantme  to  the  Reformation.      127 

trained  warriors,  with  their  cruel  dispositions,  their 
uncontrolled  passions,  their  want  of  moral  self-restraint, 
first  ravaging  and  burning  and  plundering,  and  then 
exercising  the  supreme  authority  over  our  cities  and 
villages  and  farms,  contemptuous  of  our  weakness, 
appropriating  our  wealth,  fascinated  by  our  civilization, 
and  tempted  to  the  abuse  of  our  luxury.  And  then 
imagine  our  attempting,  in  our  subjugation,  to  Chris- 
tianize them  in  their  possession  of  irresponsible  power. 
The  Franks  were  not  Indians,  it  is  true ;  they  were 
Germans — and,  if  Mr.  Ruskin  is  to  be  believed,  a  very 
chivalrous  kind  of  Germans,*  but  the  supposition  en- 
ables us  to  understand  something  of  the  state  of  affairs 
in  Gaul  at  the  moment  of  the  conquest,  and  among  the 
descendants  of  Clovis  after  his  death.  One  thing  Gaul 
had,  which  the  United  States  has  not — its  religion 
was  concentrated  in  the  one  Church,  and  that  Church 
commanded  the  respect  of  the  Franks,  as  our  sect-rent 
and  divided  Christianity  would  not,  in  the  case  sup- 
posed, command  the  respect  of  the  Indians.  It  was  of 
the  utmost  importance  for  the  time  then  being  that 
this  should  be  so.  It  was  of  the  utmost  importance 
that  the  Liturgy  should  be  fixed,  that  the  discipline 
should  be  regulated  by  well-known  canons,  that  the 
authority  of  the  bishops  should  be  acknowledged,  that 
the  necessity  of  the  sacraments  for  salvation  should  be 
appreciated,  and  that  the  reverence  for  sacred  persons, 

*  "  Our  Fathers  have  told  us."    p.  37-'9. 


12  8    C Jiriste7idom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

places  and  things  should  be — exaggerated  if  you  will. 
It  was  a  time  of  transition  and  revolution,  in  which 
both  the  Roman  society  and  the  German  society  were 
dissolved,  and  a  new  society  was  to  emerge  from  their 
elements  ;  and  therefore  it  was  a  time  in  which  the 
Church  must  preserve  her  vitality  and  continuity  that 
she  might  influence  the  new  order  that  was  to  be 
established. 

You  know  the  story  of  the  conversion  of  Clovis — 
how  his  wife  Clotilda  had  her  children  baptized,  and 
pressed  him  to  become  a  Christian  ;  how  at  the  battle 
of  Tolbiac  he  called  upon  the  God  of  Clotilda  and  won 
the  day  ;  and  how  he  with  three  thousand  of  his 
warriors  was  baptized  by  St.  Remigius  at  Rheims. 
You  remember  his  comment  upon  the  story  of  the 
Crucifixion:  "Had  I  been  there  with  my  Franks,  I 
would  have  avenged  His  wrongs."  These  words,  how- 
ever justly  subject  to  the  criticism  which  has  been 
freely  bestowed  upon  them,  express  accurately  the 
first  devotion  of  a  warrior  band  to  Christ.  It  is 
personal  allegiance  to  the  personal  Lord,  conceived 
under  the  ideas  of  the  warrior  by  calling  and  profession. 
It  is  worship  and  homage  to  a  real  and  living  King  of 
Heaven.  It  is  the  spirit  which  animated  all  the 
German  tribes  at  their  conversion  ;  *  it  flamed  out  in 


*  "  The  Heliand"  composed  among  the  Saxons  after  their  forcible  con- 
version by  Charlemagne,  is  described  as  "  that  deep  and  glorious  song  in 
honor  of  the  Saviour,  which  introduced  into  their  language — the  old  Low 
German  or  Saxon — the  story  of  the  Gospels  in  a  poetical  form.     This 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     129 

the  knightly  chivalry  of  the  Crusades  ;  and  it  could 
be  perfectly  sincere,  although  associated  with  very 
defective  ideas  of  civilized  Christian  morality.  It  is 
very  easy  to  say  that  the  motives  of  Clovis  were  a 
mixture  of  superstition  and  policy,  and  to  hint  that  his 
conversion  was  insincere.  And  it  is  very  easy  to  say 
that  St.  Remigius  and  his  brethren,  the  bishops  of  the 
Galilean  Church,  with  as  little  sincerity,  made  their 
gain  of  their  converts  by  working  upon  their  super- 
stition and  their  ignorance.  Clovis  was  superstitious  ; 
his  conversion,  in  a  wordly  point  of  view,  was  politic  ; 
his  conduct  after  his  conversion  was  crafty  and  cruel  ; 
admit  all  that — yet  his  adhesion  to  the  Catholic  faith 
was  real,  and  an  event  which,  in  the  far-reaching  order 
of  Divine  Providence,  led  to  the  most  important  results. 
Little  as  Christianity  seems  to  have  affected  his  conduct 
as  a  ruler,  his  conversion,  like  that  of  Constantine,  was 
an  event  of  great  influence  upon  the  future  of  Chris- 
tianity in  Europe.  For  the  Church  of  the  vanquished 
to  obtain  a  recognized  position  of  authority  over  the 
victors,  to  be  able  to  claim  their  allegiance  in  any 
way,  to  bring  the  moral  and  spiritual  force  of  religion, 
however  ill-understood,  to  bear  upon  their  unruly  wills, 
their  untamed  passions,  their  untutored  intellects,  to 
be    an    element    of   control    where   self-control    was 


memorable  monument  of  a  long  silent  tongue  *  *  presents  a  picture  of 
Him  [Christ]  as  a  rich,  mighty,  and  kind  King  of  the  German  people, 
whose  followers  are  faithful  unto  death." — Leivis'  History  of  Germany, 
A  87. 


i  50    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

wanting,  gave  it  the  vantage  ground  for  the  effort  to 
make  them  a  Christian  people.  But  the  process  must 
be,  in  the  nature  of  things,  tardy  and  protracted  ;  and 
that  because,  as  time  went  on,  these  barbarians  them- 
selves became,  as  I  said,  the  Church  which  was  to 
exercise  its  influence  over  them.  Never  admit,  then, 
that  God  was  not  with  His  Church  in  the  darkest  days 
of  Merovingian  misrule.  Never  admit  that  in  the  midst 
of  the  miseries  of  the  times  the  Church  was  not  doing 
His  work  in  ministering  His  mercy  and  grace  to  the 
souls  of  men.  Is  it  not  strange,  when  Ave  compare  the 
Goths  and  the  Franks,  as  Gibbon  paints  them — the 
alleged  aptitude  for  civilization  of  the  one,  with  the 
asserted  barbarism  of  the  other,  that  the  one  race 
should  be  swept  away,  and  the  other  give  birth  to  the 
two  mightiest  nations  of  Europe .''  The  one  that 
perished  held  the  Arian  heresy ;  that  which  endured 
confessed  the  Nicene  faith. 

Perhaps  it  is  because  they  confessed  the  Nicene  faith 
that  such  hard  measure  has  been  dealt  out  to  the  Franks 
by  the  historians.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that  they 
deteriorated  after  their  so-called  conversion.  I,  myself, 
do  not  believe  it.  We  have  no  such  records  of  their 
conduct  as  pagans,  as  we  have  in  Gregory  of  Tours  of 
their  deeds  as  Christians  ;  but  we  may  be  sure  that 
incidents,  such  as  those  which  are  narrated  of  them  as 
so-called  Christians,  were  not  foreign  to  their  experi- 
ence in  their  pagan  state — only  that  as  pagans  they 
were  not  subjected  to  the  strain  of  ruling  so  wide  an 


From  Constanhne  to  the  Reformation.     131 

empire,  nor  to  the  temptations  of  its  luxury.  Chris- 
tianity entering  as  a  leaven  into  the  corporate  life  of  a 
race  works  slowly  to  work  surely  ;  it  finds  its  examples 
of  Christian  virtue  in  individuals  here  and  there,  and  only 
gradually  draws  the  mass  within  its  sphere.  This  is  true 
in  the  United  States  to-day,  after  so  many  centuries  of 
Christian  effort ;  it  was  true  also  among  the  Franks. 
Nor  do  I  believe  that  the  Goths  were  naturally  superior 
to  the  Franks  in  gentleness,  justice,  aud  other  Christian 
virtues.  Though  they  had  been  longer  in  contact  with 
civilization,  we  find  them,  when  occasion  called  for  it, 
as  treacherous  and  as  cruel  as  the  Franks.  Theodoric 
murdered  Odoacer  at  a  banquet  ;  and  though  he  ruled 
well  in  Italy  while  Italy  was  quiet,  yet  as  soon  as  he 
had  reason  to  fear  a  Catholic  uprising,  he  acted  with 
barbarian  promptitude  and  ruthlessness  against  his 
most  faithful  servants  and  trusted  counsellors.  The 
Goths  in  Spain,  as  well  as  the  Vandals  in  Africa, 
showed  themselves  to  be  possessed  of  the  genuine 
barbarian  temper,  by  the  cruelties  practised  upon  the 
Catholics.  And  of  the  two  women  who  cast  such  a 
baleful  light  upon  the  third  period  of  the  Merovingian 
history,  Fredegonda  was  a  low-born  slave,  and  Brune- 
haut  a  high-born  Gothic  princess. 

Then  again,  much  of  the  disorder  and  crime  of  the 
age  was  due  to  the  defective  political  system  of  the 
Franks,  and  to  the  new  circumstances  in  which  they 
were  placed  as  the  rulers  of  so  vast  an  empire.  The 
kingdom  of  Clovis  and  his  immediate  successors  was  a 


132     Christendovt  Ecclesiastical  a?id  Pollhcat 

loosely  compacted  affair,  without  real  organization,  or 
settled  principles  of  government.  Strictly  speaking, 
these  first  Merovingian  kings  did  not  govern  the 
country  ;  they  were  the  chiefs  of  the  army  that  held  it. 
In  each  city  there  resided  a  Count  appointed  by  the 
king  to  guard  against  insurrection  ;  but  the  Roman 
population  observed  their  own  laws,  administered  by 
their  own  magistrates,  of  whom  the  bishop  was  the 
chief.  The  Franks  appropriated  the  country,  of  which, 
in  the  decay  of  the  empire,  extensive  tracts  had  gone 
out  of  cultivation,  and  reproduced  their  own  institu- 
tions modified  by  the  change  in  their  circumstances. 
The  king  differed  from  the  lesser  chiefs  only  by  the 
fact  of  his  birthright  and  the  extent  of  his  possessions. 
His  wealth  consisted  in  his  share  of  the  plunder  and  his 
ample  domains,  out  of  which  he  supported  the  royal 
establishment,  visiting  one  palace  or  villa  after  another 
and  consuming  the  supplies  stored  up  in  each.  The 
chiefs  appropriated  to  themselves  large  estates,  culti- 
vated by  the  conquered  rustics  as  serfs,  upon  which 
they  resided  in  rude  plenty,  surrounded  by  their 
retainers,  until  they  were  summoned  to  join  the  army, 
or  engaged  in  war  with  their  neighbors  on  their  own 
account.  The  freemen  tilled  their  farms,  or  formed 
village  communities  around  their  chiefs,  and  held  their 
district  assemblies  according  to  Frank  custom.  An 
annual  muster  of  the  warriors  at  the  field  of  Mars  pre- 
served the  unity  of  the  nation,  determined  on  war  or 
peace,  and   formed   such   resolves   as  might  pass   for 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      133 

legislation.  The  army  on  its  march  lived  upon  the 
country  through  which  it  passed,  and  recompensed 
itself  for  the  toils  of  war  by  the  plunder  it  secured  when 
victorious.  It  attached  itself,  therefore,  to  the  suc- 
cessful leader  ;  and  though  it  was  uniformly  loyal  to 
the  royal  family,  it  was  indifferent  to  the  individual, 
and  abandoned  the  weaker  without  compunction  to 
follow  the  stronger.  Such,  in  general  terms,  was  the 
organization  of  the  kingdom  under  Clovis  and  his  suc- 
cessors. Two  results  inevitably  followed  from  it  ;  the 
first  was  unnecessary  and  causeless  war,  the  second 
licentiousness  and  turbulence  in  time  of  peace. 

The  worst  results,  however,  followed  from  the  appli- 
cation to  the  monarchy  of  the  Frank  law  of  inheritance, 
which  divided  the  lands  and  the  wealth  of  a  deceased 
parent  among  all  his  sons.  This  wrought  all  manner 
of  confusion.  Whea  there  were  several  sons,  the 
kingdom  was  divided,  and  then  murder  or  war  was 
resorted  to  to  restore  it  to  unity.  Clovis  left  four  sons. 
Theodoric,  the  eldest,  took  the  east  or  German  portion 
of  his  father's  kingdom,  with  his  capital  at  Metz  ;  he 
was  a  warrior  like  his  father,  and  on  one  occasion  led 
a  hundred  thousand  men  into  Italy  to  make  what  he 
could  out  of  the  struggle  between  Narses  and  the  Goths. 
Chlodomir,  the  second  son,  took  the  south  or  Roman 
portion,  with  his  capital  at  Orleans  ;  Childebert  had 
the  west,  or  Celtic  portion,  capital,  Paris;  and  Clotaire, 
the  youngest,  had  the  north  or  Frank  portion,  capital, 
Soissons.      Chlodomir  died  first,  and   Childebert  and 


1 34    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Clotaire  murdered  his  children  and  appropriated  his 
domains.  Theodoric  died  next,  and  was  succeeded  by 
his  son  Theodebert,  and  he  by  his  son  Theodemir  ;  but 
they  were  all  dead  in  553,  when  Clotaire  succeeded  to 
their  kingdom.  Then  Childebert  died  in  558  ;  and  so 
the  monarchy  was  reunited  in  Clotaire.  Clotaire  died 
after  a  year's  sole  reign,  leaving  four  sons.  Sigebert 
became  king  at  Metz,  Chilperic  at  Soissons,  Gontran 
at  Orleans,  Charibert  at  Paris.  Charibert  died  first 
without  male  heirs,  and  his  dominions  were  divided 
between  his  brothers.  Henceforth  we  find  the  great 
divisions  of  Austrasia,  Neustria  and  Burgundy  ;  and 
there  is  a  struggle  for  the  supremacy  between  those 
regions  where  the  Roman  population  is  most  numerous, 
and  those  in  which  the  German  element  predominated  ; 
and  these  conflicting  tendencies  necessarily  led  to  civil 
wars.  And  now  began  the  struggle  between  Brune- 
haut  and  Fredcgonda  for  the  mastery.  Sigebert  of 
Austrasia  married  Brunehaut,  a  Visigothic  princess,  and 
the  wealth  and  honor  she  brought  him  excited  his 
brother  Chilperic  of  Neustria  to  ask  the  hand  of  her 
sister  Galswintha,  for  whom  he  put  away  his  mistress 
Fredegonda.  In  a  short  time  Galswintha  was  mur- 
dered, and  Chilperic  married  Fredegonda,  to  whom  the 
murder  was  attributed.  Brunehaut  burned  to  avenge 
her  sister  ;  Sigebert  drove  out  Chilperic,  and  was  being 
elected  king  of  the  Neustrian  Franks,  when  he  was 
assassinated  by  emissaries  of  Fredegonda.  Chilperic 
recovered  Neustria,  and   Childebert  II.  succeeded  to 


Front  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     135 

Austrasia.  On  the  death  of  his  uncle  Gontran  he 
annexed  Burgundy.  Childebert  died  in  596,  leaving 
two  sons  ;  Theodebert  took  Austrasia,  and  Theodoric 
Burgundy.  Brunehaut  desired  to  remain  with  Theod- 
ebert, but  the  Austrasians,  hating  her  because  she 
was  Gothic  and  Roman,  drove  her  out,  and  she 
took  refuge  with  Theodoric  in  Burgundy.  She  then, 
to  avenge  herself  upon  the  Austrasians,  stirred  up  war 
between  Theodoric  and  Theodebert ;  Theodebert  was 
worsted,  and  Austrasia  was  annexed  to  Burgundy. 
Theodoric  died  in  613,  at  the  age  of  25,  leaving  four 
young  children,  who  were  set  aside,  and  Clotaire  II., 
the  son  of  Chilperic  and  Fredegonda,  became  sole 
king,  at  the  age  of  29,  having  reigned  over  the  Neu- 
strians  since  he  was  two  years  old.  The  Austrasians 
delivered  Brunehaut  to  him,  and  she  was  barbarously 
put  to  death,  and  so  Fredegonda  triumphed. 

The  peace  and  prosperity  which  came  to  the  Franks 
under  the  sole  and  united  reigns  of  Clotaire  II.  and  his 
son  Dagobert  show  that  the  vicious  law  of  inheritance 
of  the  monarchy  was  the  principal  cause  of  these  dis- 
orders. There  was  another  reason  for  the  final  degen- 
eracy of  the  Merovingians.  The  luxury  and  ceremonial 
of  the  monarchy,  as  the  kings  at  Paris  adopted  Roman 
customs,  acted  unfavorably  upon  the  occupant  of  the 
throne,  and  more  unfavorably  upon  his  heirs.  Just  as 
the  line  of  a  Roman  emperor  became  imbecile  and  failed 
by  the  third  or  fourth  generation,  so  it  was  with  the 
Frankish  kings.     Though  the  Merovingian  line  did  not 


136    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


fail  until  it  was  set  aside,  it  became  imbecile  ;  because 
the  false  dignity  that  surrounded  it  cut  it  off  from  all 
practical  education,  and  from  the  discipline  that  would 
produce  a  robust  manhood.  Moreover  the  later  kings 
were  feeble  boys,  beginning  to  reign  in  infancy,  and 
therefore  necessarily  under  the  tutelage  of  the  mayors 
of  the  palace,  who  kept  them  in  effeminate  seclusion, 
under  pretence  of  preserving  their  dignity.  Allowing 
for  all  these  facts,  wc  may  see  reason  to  mitigate  the 
harsh  judgment  of  history  upon  the  unfortunate  Mero- 
vingians; and,  what  is  more  important,  to  avoid  the  error 
of  making  them  the  measure  of  the  virtue  or  vice  of  the 
Franks  in  general,  or  of  the  influence  of  Christianity 
among  them.* 

Still  it  must  be  admitted  that  in  dealing  with  the 
Franks  the  Church  had  a  hard  task  set  before  it.  A 
nominally  Christian,  but  essentially  barbarous  nation 
must  be  dealt  with  as  a  whole,  and  as  individuals  as 
well  ;  and  it  was  most  difficult  to  induce  a  proud  and 
high-spirited  people  to  accept  laws  of  morality  from 
their  vassals.  The  Franks  lived  among  the  Romans  as 
a  military  aristocracy  ;  and  although  they  professed  the 
Christian  faith  and  reverenced  the  bishops,  they  thought 
it  a  degradation  for  a  Frank  to  become  a  clergyman, 
until  the  Church  came  to  have  pohtical  influence.  They 
kept  their  own  laws  and  customs,  and  refused  to  adopt 
the  Roman  jurisprudence,  or  to  yield  lay  obedience  to 

*One  should  by  all  means  read  Mr.  Ruskin's  little  book,  "Our  Fathers 
have  told  us,"  for  a  correction  of  the  usual  representation  of  the  Franks. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      137 

the  canons  ;  and  they  would  not  permit   the  clergy  to 
judge  of  the  justice  or  injustice  of  war,  or  of  any  affair 
of  State.     I  have  no  doubt  that  a  great  part  of  the  im- 
morality  and   cruelty   of    the   time    appeared   neither 
immoral  nor  cruel  to  the  Franks,  and  that  the  quarrels 
in  the  royal  family  were  thought  politically  useful  by 
the  rude  yet  shrewd  warriors  who  were  satisfied  with  the 
results  of  this  "natural  selection"  and  "survival  of  the 
fittest,"  and  who  willingly  transferred  their  allegiance 
to  the  strongest,  or  to  him  who  survived  his  relatives. 
And    the    Romanized    Gallic    Churchmen    had   been 
schooled  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Empire  that  it  was  trea- 
son to  criticise  the  policy  or  conduct  of  the  ruler,  and 
that  the  head  of  the  State  was  above  all  law,  so  long  as 
he  was  orthodox  in  the  profession  of  his  faith.     So  that 
it  was  a  long  time  before  the  Church  was  able  to  exert 
an  effective  influence  upon  the  morals  of  the  Franks. 
The  clergy  exerted  themselves,  in  the  meantime,  to 
preserve  the  property  of  the  Church  from  spoliation,  to 
secure  the  right  of  asylum  for  the  sacred  precincts  as  a 
mitigation  of  the  horrors  of  war  and  a  restraint  upon 
private  vengeance,   to   assert   the  jurisdiction   of  the 
bishop  over  the  chaplains  in  the  houses  of  the  chiefs,  to 
put  a  stop  to  incestuous  marriages  (against  which  there 
are  many  canons),  and  so  to  drive  the  entering  wedge 
into   the   body  of  corrupt    custom   which  formed  the 
habits  of  the  people,  and  through  their  habits,  their 
opinions  of  what  was  right  and  wrong.     It  was  not  until 
a  political  system  began  to  develop  itself,  and  the  bish- 


38     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


ops  were  called  to  a  share  in  the  legislation  and 
administration  of  the  kingdom,  that  they  obtained  an 
authority  over  public  morals  that  was  at  all  respected. 
And  yet  there  are  evidences  during  the  first  period  of 
barbarian  rule  of  a  real,  if  late  repentance  on  the  part  of 
some  of  the  kings.  Sigismund,  King  of  the  Burgundians, 
having  in  522,  unjustly  put  his  son  to  death,  "  afterwards 
repented  of  it,  and  passed  many  days  fasting  and  weep- 
ing at  the  [church  in  which  was  the]  tomb  of  St.  Maurice, 
beseeching  God  to  punish  him  in  this  world,  and  not  in 
the  next."  And  of  Clotaire  I.,  of  whom  we  are  told  by 
every  historian,  that  he  murdered  in  cold  blood  the 
children  of  his  brother  Clodomir,  we  are  also  told  this, 
which  the  historians  forget  to  mention,  that  "  in  the  last 
year  of  his  reign,  he  came  to  [the  Church  of]  St.  Martin 
of  Tours,  and  brought  very  rich  gifts  along  with  him. 
He  there  enumerated  all  the  sins  of  his  past  life,  and 
with  deep  groans  besought  the  holy  confessor  to  implore 
God's  mercy  for  him."  *  Doubtless  it  was  very  supersti- 
tious to  make  large  offerings  to  the  Church,  and  to  ask 
the  intercession  of  the  departed  saint  ;  but  the  repent- 
ance that  led  him  to  make  a  public  confession  of  his  sins 
was  real,  and  I  doubt  not  the  mercy  of  God  heard  his 
prayers  for  pardon. 

The  change  in  the  affairs  of  Gaul  under  the  Frank 
dominion  had  a  reactionary  effect  upon  the  Church. 
And  here  again  I  must  refer  you  to  M.  Guizot's  discus- 


*rieury,  B.  XXXIV.     Ch.  I. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      139 

sion  of  the  results  of  the  barbarian  invasions,  and  quote 
a  few  sentences  :  The  invasions,  he  says,  "destroyed 
first,  all  regular,  habitual  and  easy  correspondence  be- 
tween the  various  parts  of  the  territory  ;  second,  all 
security,  all  sure  prospect  of  the  future  ;  they  broke  the 
ties  which  bound  together  the  inhabitants  of  the  same 
country,  the  moments  of  the  same  life  ;  they  isolated 
men,  and  the  days  of  each  man.  -s^-  *  *  A  town  was 
pillaged,  a  road  rendered  impassable,  a  bridge  destroyed ; 
such  or  such  a  communication  ceased  ;  the  culture  of 
the  land  became  impossible  in  such  or  such  a  district  ; 
in  a  word,  the  organic  harmony,  the  general  activity  of 
the  social  body  were  each  day  fettered   and   disturbed. 

*  *  *  The  towns,  the  primitive  elements  of  the 
Roman  world,  survived  almost  alone  amidst  its  ruin. 

*  *  *  Even  within  the  towns  the  ancient  society 
was  far  from  maintaining  itself  strong  and  entire  ; 
amidst  the  movements  of  the  invasions  the  towns  were 
regarded  above  all  as  fortresses  ;  the  population  shut 
themselves  therein  to  escape  from  the  hordes  which 
ravaged  the  country.  When  the  barbarian  immigration 
was  somewhat  diminished,  when  the  new  people  had 
planted  themselves  upon  the  territory,  the  towns  still 
remained  fortresses  ;  in  place  of  having  to  defend  them- 
selves against  the  wandering  hordes,  they  had  to  defend 
themselves  against  their  neighbors,  against  the  greedy 
and  turbulent  possessors  of  the  surrounding  country. 
There  was  therefore  little  security  behind  these  weak 
ramparts.     *     *     *     Such  in  the  sixth  century  were  the 


140     Christendovt  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

general  effects  of  the  invasion  and  establishment  of  the 
barbarians  upon  Roman  society  ;  that  was  the  condition 
in  which  they  placed  it." 

This  state  of  affairs  seriously  affected  the  Church.  It 
involved  a  decay  in  general  education,  and  in  the  large 
interests  of  the  world  ;  it  cramped  men's  thoughts  and 
sympathies  into  their  own  narrow  and  precarious  sur- 
roundings ;  and  therefore  it  involved  a  decay  in  theo- 
logical education  and  in  the  wider  interests  of  the  world 
ecclesiastical;  it  entangled  the  bishops  and  priests  of 
the  Church  in  multiplied  local  cares,  and  stifled  a 
generous  intellectual  development.  At  the  same  time 
it  gave  an  impulse  to  earnest,  practical,  personal  relig- 
ion. As  the  many  were  pressed  with  the  cares  of  this 
world  the  few  were  seized  with  an  ardent  desire  either 
to  mitigate  the  evils  of  the  time  by  the  unbounded 
exercise  of  charity,  or  to  escape  from  the  world  alto- 
gether to  serve  God  in  the  seclusion  of  monasticism. 
And  therefore  we  find,  both  in  the  first  and  in  the  second 
period  of  the  Frank  kingdom,  that  although  there  was 
a  manifest  decline  in  learning,  as  compared  with  the 
previous  age,  yet  there  were  a  multitude  of  ecclesiastics 
who  obtained  the  unbounded  love  and  confidence  of  the 
laity  for  their  leadership  in  zeal  and  devotion  and  char- 
ity ;  and  there  were  many  others,  both  men  and  women, 
whose  personal  purity,  and  voluntary  self-denial,  and 
practice  of  austerities,  which  we  in  our  superior  enlight- 
enment think  unnecessary,  if  not  foolish,  were  at  least  an 
appeal  against  sensuality,  and  whose  example  of  volun- 


From  Cojistajitme  to  the  Refor^nation.      141 

tary  submission  to  hardship  for  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven's 
sake,  was  a  great  help  to  the  common  people  in 
enabling  them  to  bear  patiently  the  miseries  of  the 
times.  Whatever  else  may  be  said  of  it,  the  literature 
of  the  period,  so  far  as  there  was  a  literature,  was  dis- 
tinctively Christian — and  Christian  after  a  manner  which 
taught  those  who  read  it  to  appreciate  and  admire,  and 
invited  them  to  practise  the  charity  and  purity  of  the 
Gospel.  And  as  was  the  literature,  so  were  the  people 
of  whom  that  literature  was  the  record.  The  lives  of 
the  saints  of  this  age  contain  many  things  that  are 
childish,  many  that  are  imaginary  and  imaginative, 
many  that  are  exaggerated  ;  but  they  do  aim  to  set 
forth  examples  of  real  goodness,  and  they  appeal  to  the 
heart  by  the  sincerity  and  simplicity  that  pervade  them. 
Another  change  came  over  the  Church  of  the  Franks, 
as  the  nation  developed  a  more  regular  political  consti- 
tution, and  the  bishops  were  recognized  as  a  political 
power — as  the  representatives  of  the  Roman  or  Gallic 
population.  In  the  year  614,  when  the  Prankish  Em- 
pire was  reunited  for  the  second  time,  under  Clotaire 
II.,  the  bishops  were  called  to  the  great  assembly  of 
the  Franks,  and  attended  to  the  number  of  seventy- 
nine.  The  event  is  remarkable  as  the  beginning  of  the 
immense  political  influence  which  the  Church  exercised 
all  through  the  Middle  Ages.  In  that  assembly  an 
edict  was  put  forth  for  the  general  regulation  of  the 
kingdom  under  the  title  of  the  "  perpetual  constitution." 
This  constitution  marks  three  things  :  the  growth  of  a 


142     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

political  system  among  the  Franks,  founded  on  written 
law,  the  rise  of  a  territorial  aristocracy,  and  the 
increased  importance  of  the  leaders  of  the  Roman  pop- 
ulation in  the  national  organization.  So  much  is  said 
of  the  ambition  of  Churchmen  in  grasping  at  political 
power,  that  I  must  ask  your  attention  particularly  to 
their  advent  into  the  political  arena  at  this  time,  and 
its  meaning.  Theycame  because  they  were  summoned; 
and  their  presence  in  the  national  assembly  of  the  Franks 
means  that  it  was  no  longer  a  mere  concourse  of  armed 
warriors,  met  to  determine  upon  the  next  expedition  of 
war  and  plunder,  but  a  proper  legislature  for  the  nation; 
the  chiefs  of  the  Romanized  Gauls  were  called  to  it  as 
well  as  the  chiefs  of  the  Franks,  because  all  were 
recognized  as  parts  of  the  nation.  From  this  time  forth, 
the  bishops  were,  if  we  may  so  say,  members  of  parlia- 
ment, and  as  a  natural  consequence  they  entered  into 
the  political  life  of  the  age  ;  they  were  compelled  to  do 
it  ;  the  times  demanded  it,  and  they  ought  to  do  it  ; 
because  the  Church  only  had  the  education,  the  know- 
ledge of  written  law  which  was  necessary  for  a  kingdom 
in  which  there  was  to  be  a  settled  administration.  It 
was  about  this  time  that  the  laws  of  the  Franks  were 
reduced  to  writing,  cleared  of  obsolete  pagan  customs, 
and  amended  by  incorporating  into  them  some  new 
provisions  inspired  with  a  Christian  spirit. 

And  now,  before  I  go  on  to  consider  some  bad  effects 
of  this  calling  of  the  bishops  to  political  influence,  I 
wish  to  show  you  some  of  the  men  who  were  bishops 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reforinatioii.      143 

at  this  time,  that  you  may  see  for  yourselves  that  in  a 
superstitious  and  turbulent  age  they  were  true  Chris- 
tians ;  and  I  do  this  because  neither  in  the  secular 
histories,  nor  in  the  manuals  of  Church  history  are  the 
facts  given  by  which  you  can  see  their  life  as  it  actually 
was.  What  I  am  about  to  read  to  you  is  from  an  old 
English  translation  of  several  volumes  of  Fleury  which 
I  picked  up  some  time  ago  ;  and  I  give  it  in  the  old 
English,  because  it  is  one  of  the  few  books  I  own,  *  and 
to  which  I  am  able  to  refer  while  writing  these  lectures, 
and  because  I  like  the  quaint  old  style.  The  first  whom 
I  shall  introduce  to  you  is  St.  Arnulph  of  Metz,  the 
ancestor  of  Charlemagne. 

"St.  Arnoul  [as  Fleury  calls  him]  was  of  French 
[/.  e.,  Frank]  parentage,  of  a  rich  and  noble  family. 
Having  studied  much  in  his  youth,  he  was  placed  in  the 
court  of  King  Theodebert,  under  the  direction  of 
Giondulph,  mayor  of  the  palace,  and  acquired  so  great 
knowledge  in  public  affairs  that  he  held  the  first  rank 
next  the  prince,  and  alone  governed  six  towns,  which 
used  to  be  governed  by  six  officers,  called  domestics 
[/.  e.,  counts].  He  was  likewise  a  great  soldier  ;  but 
even  at  that  time  he  applied  himself  to  prayer,  fasting, 
and  to  relieve  the  poor.  He  married  a  very  noble  lady 
called  Doda,   by   whom    he    had  two   sons,    Clodulph 


*I  have  also  the  full  edition  of  Fleury  in  French,  in  25  volumes,  8vo. 
At  Nashotah  we  had  a  good  library,  and  I  was  able  to  make  use  of 
Baronius,  Mabillon's  Acta  Sanctorum  Ordinis  Benedicti,  Labbe's 
Concilia,  &c. 


144     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

and  Ansegisus  ;  *  however,  having  contracted  a  great 
friendship  with  another  lord  named  Romaric,  who  was 
also  attached  to  the  service  of  King  Theodebert,  they 
resolved  together  to  renounce  the  world,  and  to  retire 
to  the  monastery  of  Lerins,  but  God  did  not  permit 
them  to  execute  this  design.  They  both  entered  into 
the  service  of  King  Clotaire  (II.)-  In  the  first  year  of 
his  reigning  alone  in  France,  the  see  of  Metz  had  been 
vacant,  *  *  *  and  the  people  with  one  voice  de- 
manding St.  Arnoul,  he  was  constrained  to  accept  the 
bishopric,  although  he  was  only  a  layman.  *  *  * 
Doda,  his  wife,  retired  to  Treves  and  took  the  monastic 
veil.  St.  Arnoul,  although  a  bishop,  continued  against 
his  inclinations  in  the  court  of  King  Clotaire,  where  he 
held  the  first  rank  ;  but  he  increased  his  alms  so  much 
that  the  poor  came  to  him  in  crowds,  even  from  distant 
countries."  When  Clotaire  made  his  son  Dagobert,  at 
the  age  of  15,  King  of  Austrasia,  "he  sent  Arnoul, 
Bishop  of  Metz,  and  Pepin,  mayor  of  the  palace,  to 
assist  him  with  their  advice,  which  so  long  as  he 
followed,  he  reigned  in  glory  and  prosperity."  t  But 
when  Dagobert  succeeded  to  the  sole  monarchy,  on 
the  death  of  Clotaire,  and  removed  his  residence  to 
Paris,  St.  Arnulph  left  the  court,  resigned  his  see,  and 
retired  to  a  hermitage  in  the  Vosges,  where  he  died 
about  the  year  640.  His  body  was  carried  to  Metz, 
and  buried  in  the  abbey  which  bears  his  name. 

*  From  Ansegisus  was  descended  Charlemagne. 
tFleury,  B.  XXXIII.     Ch.  15. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     145 

St.  Lupus,  Archbishop  of  Sens,  was  born  at  Orleans, 
of  parents  allied  to  the  royal  family.  He  was  made 
bishop  in  the  year  609.  He  had  supported  the  party 
of  young  Sigebert  to  the  utmost  of  his  power  after  the 
death  of  King  Theodoric*  "  Afterwards  KingClotaire 
becoming  master  of  Burgundy,  sent  Farulph  thither  to 
take  care  of  his  affairs.  When  he  drew  near  Sens  he 
was  very  angry  that  the  archbishop  did  not  come  out 
to  meet  him,  and  bring  him  presents  ;  and  when  he 
arrived  there  did  not  look  upon  him  with  a  favorable 
countenance ;  but  St.  Lupus  said  to  him,  the  duty  of  a 
bishop  is  to  govern  the  people,  and  to  teach  the  great 
men  of  the  world  the  commandments  of  God  ;  and 
therefore  it  is  rather  their  duty  to  come  to  him."  Upon 
the  representations  of  Farulph,  Clotaire  "banished  St. 
Lupus  to  Ausene,  a  village  in  Vimen  upon  the  river 
Bresle,  whither  he  was  conducted  by  a  pagan  duke 
named  Landegesil.  The  holy  bishop  being  come 
thither,  and  finding  profane  temples,  wherein  the 
people  of  the  country  worshipped  false  gods,  believed 
he  was  sent  by  God  for  their  conversion,  which  was  a 
consolation  to  him  in  his  banishment.  At  length, 
having  healed  a  blind  man,  he  converted  Landegesil 
and  baptized  him,  together  with  several  of  the  army  of  the 
Franks  who  were  yet  pagans."  f  He  was  subsequently 
restored  to  his  see,  and  died  in  623. 

*That  is  he  had  supported  the  interest  of  Theodoric's  young  son 
Sigebert,  as  King  of  Burgundy,  against  the  consolidation  of  the  whole 
monarchy  under  Clotaire  II. 

fFleury.  B.  XXXIII.     Ch.  15. 


146     C liristendo77t  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

The  next  I  wish  to  tell  you  of  is  St.  Eligius,  of  whom 
Dr.  Maitland  has  so  much  to  say.  He  was  born  of 
Roman  [/.  c,  Gallic]  parents,  and  brought  up  to  the 
trade  of  a  goldsmith,  in  which  he  showed  so  much  skill 
that  he  was  taken  into  the  service  of  Clotaire,  and  made 
master  of  the  mint.  "  St.  Eloi  being  come  to  years  of 
maturity,  resolved  to  clear  his  conscience,  and  for  this 
purpose  confessing  all  his  actions  from  his  youth  to  a 
priest,  he  inflicted  a  severe  penance  upon  himself  "  This 
is  the  first  example,"  says  Fleury,  "  that  I  find  of  a 
general  confession."  After  the  death  of  Clotaire,  he 
grew  into  so  great  credit  with  King  Dagobert,  that  he 
drew  upon  himself  the  envy  of  wicked  men  whom  he 
opposed.  In  the  meantime  he  continued  to  labor  in 
his  calling  for  the  King.  *  *  *  St.  Eloi  had  always 
a  book  open  before  him  when  he  worked,  that  he  might 
at  the  same  time  instruct  himself  in  the  law  of  God. 
There  were  several  books  fixed  to  the  walls  of  his 
chamber,  especially  the  Holy  Scriptures,  which  he  read 
after  he  had  prayed  and  sung  psalms  ;  and  several  of 
his  domestics  sung  the  canonical  office  with  him  day 
and  night.  *  *  *  Eloi  bestowed  great  sums  in 
alms,*  giving  to  the  poor  all  that  he  received  from  the 
king's    bounty.     *     *     *      He    was    more    especially 


*  It  ought  to  be  superfluous,  but  it  is  not,  after  what  the  moderns  have 
said  of  St.  Eligius,  to  remark  that  those  ancients  who  speak  of  the  special 
charity,  self-denial  or  devotion  of  the  saints,  assume,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
that  their  readers  understand  that  such  persons  kept  the  ten  commandments 
and  performed  the  ordinary  duties  of  religion. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     147 


zealous  to  redeem  captives ;  when  he  knew  that  a  slave 
was  to  be  sold  in  anyplace,  he  made  haste  thither,  and 
sometimes  ransomed  fifty  or  a  hundred  at  a  time, 
especially  Saxons,  who  were  sold  in  great  companies. 
*  *  *  On  the  death  of  St.  Acarius,  Bishop  of  Noyon, 
St.  Eloi  was  elected  to  succeed  him.  *  *  *  When 
he  found  he  could  in  no  way  avoid  the  Episcopal 
dignity,  he  was  resolved  at  least  to  observe  the  rules, 
and  would  not  be  consecrated  till  he  had  some  time 
practised  the  clerical  duties,  t  *  *  *  His  zeal 
appeared  chiefly  in  the  conversion  of  the  infidels  ;  he 
carefully  visited  the  cities  of  his  large  diocese,  espe- 
cially such  as  had  not  yet  received  the  Gospel,  as  the 
Flemings,  the  inhabitants  of  Antwerp,  the  Prisons  and 
the  Suevi  who  dwelt  near  Courtray,  and  the  rest  as  far 
as  the  sea  shore,  who  seemed  to  be  at  the  extremity  of 
the  earth.  At  first  these  people  were  as  fierce  as  wild 
beasts,  and  would  have  pulled  him  in  pieces  ;  but  he 
desired  nothing  more  than  martyrdom  ;  at  length,  con- 
sidering his  goodness,  meekness  and  frugal  life,  they 
began  to  admire,  and  even  to  desire  to  imitate  him. 
Many  were  converted,  the  temples  were  destroyed, 
and  idol-worship  abolished.  The  holy  bishop  by  his 
discourses  raised  the  minds  of  these  supine  and  slothful 
barbarians  to  an  affection  for  heavenly  things,  and 
inspired  them  with  a  meek  and  peaceable  temper. 
Every   year    at    Easter   he   baptized    great    numbers, 

\  That  is,  he  remained  some  time  deacon  and  priest  before  being  made 
bishop. 


1 48     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  aiid  Political 

whom  he  had  gained  to  the  knowledge  of  God  in  the 
space  of  the  twelve  preceding  months.  *  *  *  pjg 
exhorted  such  as  were  already  Christians,  as  well  as 
the  new  converts,  to  frequent  the  churches,  give  alms, 
set  their  slaves  at  liberty,  and  to  practise  all  sorts  of 
good  works  ;  and  persuaded  several  of  both  sexes  to 
embrace  a  monastic  life."  * 

Now  of  course  it  was  very  wrong  in  St.  Eligius  to 
"  persuade  several  of  both  sexes  to  embrace  a  monastic 
life,"  but  I  do  think  hard  measure  has  been  dealt  out 
to  him  by  Mosheim  and  Gieseler  and  their  copyists,  in 
quoting  his  sermon  as  an  evidence  of  the  degraded 
Christianity  of  the  times.  After  reading  what  Dr. 
Maitland  gives  of  that  sermon,  I  think  we  should  be 
the  better  to  have  more  such  sermons  preached  to  us 
of  the  nineteenth  century ;  and,  on  the  whole,  my 
unlearned  judgment  is,  that  if  ever  there  was  a  true 
Christian  upon  earth,  St.  Eligius  was  one. 

The  last  example  I  shall  bring  before  you  is  St.  Leger 
— of  whom  Dean  Milman  says,  "Legend  dwells  with  fond 
pertinacity  on  the  holiness  of  the  saint  ;  sterner,  but 
more  veracious  hi:  tory  cannot  but  detect  the  ambitious 
and  turbulent  head  of  a  great  faction."  I  have  not  had 
the  opportunity,  of  which  Dean  Milman  doubtless  availed 
himself,  of  reading  the  life  of  St.  Leger  in  the  Acta 
Sanctorum  of  the  Bollandists  ;  but  I  am  content  to 
leave  your  judgment  of  this  censure  to  rest  on  what  I 

*Fleury,  B.  XXXVII.     Ch.  38. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      149 

am  about  to  give  you  from  Fleury.  St.  Leger  was 
Bishop  of  Autun  in  Burgundy,  at  the  time  that  Ebroin 
was  mayor  of  the  palace  to  Clotaire  III.  and  Theodoric 
III.  of  Neustria  ;  and  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  since 
the  "  perpetual  constitution,"  the  bishops  had  their 
political  functions  as  the  equals  of  the  secular  nobles. 
St.  Leger  was  opposed  to  the  policy  of  Ebroin,  and 
acted  with  the  others  who  were  so  opposed.  On  the 
death  of  Clotaire  III.,  Ebroin  set  up  Theodoric  III.,  a 
boy  about  15  years  old,  proposing  to  rule  in  his  name, 
St.  Leger  desired  that  Childeric  II.,  who  had  been  ten 
years  King  of  Austrasia,  should  be  elected  King  of 
Neustria  and  Burgundy,  and  so  unite  the  three  king- 
doms. I  fail  to  see  that  he  was  wrong  in  exerting 
himself  to  bring  that  about.  He  did  bring  it  about, 
and  Childeric  became  king.  I  need  not  go  through 
the  history  ;  suffice  it  to  say  that  after  Childeric's 
death,  Ebroin  regained  power  as  the  minister  of 
Theodoric  or  Thierry  III.,  and  determined  to  be 
revenged  on  St.  Leger.  And  this  is  what  Fleury  tells 
us  of  the  way  in  which  St.  Leger  acted  when  Autun 
was  besieged  for  his  sake  : 

"  They  marched  to  Autun  in  order  to  apprehend  St. 
Leger,  who  was  there  endeavoring  to  restore  his  people 
to  their  former  tranquility,  after  the  disorders  which 
had  ensued  upon  his  absence.  His  friends  and  his 
clergy  advised  him  to  retire,  and  to  carry  with  him  the 
treasure  which  he  had,  that  so  the  enemy  might  be 
diverted  from  coming  thither,  when  they  should  have 


150     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

lost  the  hopes  of  getting  it  into  their  possession.  But 
he  replied,  'To  what  purpose  should  I  to  my  shame 
burden  myself  with  that  which  I  cannot  carry  with  me 
to  heaven  ?  Is  it  not  better  to  give  it  to  the  poor  ? ' 
Accordingly  he  caused  his  silver  plate  to  be  brought 
forth,  of  which  he  had  a  great  quantity,  and  to  be 
beaten  in  pieces  with  hammers,  that  it  might  be  dis- 
tributed by  the  hands  of  trusty  persons,  all  of  it  but 
what  was  dedicated  to  sacred  uses  ;  and  it  being  thus 
distributed,  great  relief  was  thereby  afforded  to  several 
convents  of  both  sexes.  He  afterwards  ordered  a  fast 
of  three  days,  and  a  general  procession,  wherein  they 
carried  the  cross  and  the  relics  of  the  saints  about  the 
walls  of  the  city  ;  and  at  every  one  of  the  gates  he 
prostrated  himself,  and  besought  God  with  tears,  that 
if  He  did  call  him  to  martyrdom.  He  would  not  suffer  his 
flock  to  become  captives.  The  people  had  flocked  from 
all  parts,  for  fear  of  the  enemy,  into  the  city,  the  gates 
of  which  were  shut,  and  every  place  put  into  a  posture 
of  defence,  and  the  holy  bishop  called  all  the  people 
together  into  the  church,  and  asked  pardon  of  such 
whom  he  might  chance  to  have  offended,  by  repre- 
hending them  with  too  much  severity.  Soon  after,  the 
enemy  came  up,  and  those  within  made  a  stout  defence, 
and  continued  fighting  until  the  evening.  But  St. 
Leger,  seeing  to  what  danger  they  exposed  themselves, 
said  :  '  Do  not  fight  any  longer;  if  it  be  upon  my  account 
that  they  are  come,  I  am  ready  to  give  them  satis- 
faction :  let  us  send  one  of  our  brethren  to  know  what 


From  Constantiiie  to  the  Reformation.      1 5 1 

they  would  have.'  Whereupon  an  abbot  named  Mero- 
alde  went  out  to  the  enemy  and  applied  himself  to 
Diddon  ;  who  answered  that  they  would  not  give  over 
storming  the  town  till  they  had  delivered  Leger  to  them, 
and  taken  an  oath  of  fidelity  to  King  Clovis,  swearing 
that  King  Theodoric  was  dead.  St.  Leger,  being 
informed  of  this  answer,  publicly  declared  that  he 
would  sooner  suffer  death  than  fail  in  his  fidelity  to  his 
prince  ;  and  the  enemy  pressing  upon  the  city  with  fire 
and  sword,  he  took  leave  of  all  the  brethren,  and, 
having  first  received  the  holy  communion,  marched 
boldly  towards  the  gates,  which  he  ordered  to  be 
opened,  and  offered  himself  to  the  enemy  ;  who  pulled 
out  his  eyes,  which  he  endured  without  suffering  his 
hands  to  be  tied,  or  venting  the  least  groan,  singing 
psalms  all  the  while."  He  was  subsequently  otherwise 
mutilated,  and  afterwards  put  to  death. 

Now  in  reading  the  popular  histories,  you  do  not 
find  these  facts  and  such  as  these  brought  forward.  It 
is  the  fashion  to  represent  Christianity  as  at  this  time 
entirely  degraded  and  false  to  its  high  mission.  You 
may  read  of  Fredegonda's  priests,  whom  that  wicked 
woman  employed  to  assassinate  her  enemies  ;  but  they 
do  not  tell  you  that  the  bishops  had  to  struggle  hard 
to  exercise  jurisdiction  over  the  domestic  chaplains  of 
the  grandees,  and  that  it  frequently  happened  that 
these  persons  would  procure  the  ordination  of  bad  men 
as  chaplains,  that  they  might  be  free  from  rebuke  for 
their  lawless  lives,  and  that  many  councils  endeavored 


1 5  2     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

to  reform  this  abuse.  Nor  do  they  tell  you  of  the 
saintly  lives,  of  which  there  are  plenty  of  records,  if 
they  would  but  take  notice  of  them.  St.  Leger  may 
have  been  the  ambitious  and  turbulent  prelate  that 
Dean  Milman  represents  him  ;  but  I  confess  I  sympa- 
thize with  Mr.  Ruskin  in  his  sharp  criticism  of  "the 
mind  that  instinctively  assumes  the  desire  of  place  and 
power  not  only  to  be  universal  in  Priesthood,  but  to  be 
always  purely  selfish  in  the  ground  of  it.  The  idea," 
he  adds,  "  that  power  might  possibly  be  desired  for  the 
sake  of  its  benevolent  use,  so  far  as  I  remember,  does 
not  occur  in  the  pages  of  any  ecclesiastical  historian  of 
recent  date."*  I  think  you  will  agree  with  me,  that 
when  St.  Leger  delivered  himself  up  to  save  his  city 
from  assault  and  pillage,  he  acted  as  a  good  shepherd, 
"  who  giveth  his  life  for  the  sheep,"  and  that  his  leave- 
taking,  asking  their  forgiveness,  if  he  had  offended  any, 
with  prayers  and  litanies  and  the  holy  communion, 
was  both  bishop- like  and  Christian — even  if  he  did 
carry  the  cross  and  the  relics  in  procession  about  the 
city  ;  and  that  he  could  not  have  given  better  evidence 
of  a  truly  Christian  spirit  in  that  particular,  had  he 
been  as  saintly  and  self-denying  and  enlightened  as 
Dean  Milman  himself 

But  what  I  want  you  to  remember  just  now  is,  that 
these  men,  and  such  as  these  were  the  political  bishops 
of  their  day  ;  they  took  part  in  the  political  affairs  of 

*  "  Our  fathers  have  told  us  "  p.  74. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      153 

the  kingdom  because  they  were  called  to  do  so,  and 
very  much  to  its  advantage  ;  they  were  the  heads  and 
chiefs  of  the  old  Roman  and  Gallic  population,  and  in 
the  unifying  of  the  kingdom  that  population  needed  to 
be  represented  in  the  legislative  assembly  of  the 
Franks.  Political  power  came  into  their  hands  be- 
cause it  was  to  the  interest  of  the  nation  that  it  should  ; 
and  of  course  this  conferring  of  political  power  upon 
the  bishops  changed  in  a  great  degree  their  official 
action  and  responsibilities.  They  became  statesmen 
according  to  the  light  of  the  times  ;  they  took  part  in 
the  affairs  of  the  government  ;  they  were  members  of 
the  different  political  and  national  parties.  Robertson 
remarks,  with  apparent  surprise,  that  several  other 
saints  who  are  reverenced  among  the  French  were 
opposed  to  St.  Leger  and  sided  with  Ebroin.  They 
belonged  to  the  party  of  Ebroin.  But  for  all  this  there 
is  no  need  to  asperse  their  religious  character,  or  to 
ignore  the  fact  that  they  were  canonized  by  the  public 
opinion  of  the  people  who  knew  them  and  reverenced 
them  for  the  purity,  charity  and  self-denial  of  their 
lives. 

Here  I  wish  once  more  to  repeat  a  remark  of  great 
importance  in  the  study  of  ecclesiastical  institutions. 
The  history  of  the  Church  shows  from  time  to  time 
various  corruptions.  But  those  corruptions  were  not 
introduced  consciously  for  the  sake  of  making  a  gain  of 
them.  Some  of  them  were  "survivals"  of  previous 
habits  and  beliefs  among   nations   imperfectly   Chris- 


1 54     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

tianized — as  we  may  see  in  our  own  negro  population 
at  the  South  at  the  present  day.  Or  they  were  exag- 
gerations of  a  true  sentiment,  as  in  the  reverence  for 
departed  saints,  of  which  I  have  just  spoken — which 
may  be  forgiven  in  a  declining  age,  dwelling  with  hope- 
less regret  upon  departed  glories.  Or  they  were 
inventions  of  doctrine  to  excuse  or  justify  abnormal  but 
inveterate  practice,  as  the  doctrine  of  indulgences  in  its 
later  development,  or  the  doctrine  so  popular  at  pres- 
ent, that  the  Church  is  made  up  of  jarring  sects.  Or 
they  were  the  reaction  of  the  State  upon  the  Church, 
or  of  the  laity  upon  the  clergy,  under  the  conditions  of 
the  times.  Or  they  were  the  persistence  in  what  were 
once  lawful  and  laudable  adjustments  of  the  variable 
elements  in  the  organization  of  the  Church,  after  the 
circumstances  to  which  they  were  adjusted  had  passed 
away.  Now  in  the  period  of  which  I  am  speaking,  we 
see  the  origin  of  a  good  many  things  which  fall  under 
each  of  these  heads  ;  but  what  I  wish  to  point  out  par- 
ticularly is  the  origin  of  some  which  fall  under  the  last 
head,  and  to  show  you  that  at  this  period  they  were 
beneficial  adjustments,  the  laudable  efforts  of  good  men 
to  cope  with  the  difficulties  of  the  times,  that  they 
operated  for  good,  and  that  they  only  became  "  corrup- 
tions "  by  being  continued  beyond  their  time.  The 
Bishop  of  Michigan  in  a  sermon  preached  some  time 
ago  in  Cleveland,  and  subsequently  printed,  laid  down 
the  distinction,  which  is  a  very  important  one,  between 
order   and   organization  ;    he    showed    that    while    the 


From  Cons  Ian  tine  to  the  Reformation.      155 

orders  of  the  Church  are  three  and  unchangeable, 
bishops,  priests,  and  deacons,  the  Church  is  able,  pre- 
serving these  orders,  to  adapt  her  organization  to  the 
circumstances  of  the  times  and  of  the  people  among 
whom  she  labors.  In  this  period  of  transition,  the 
Galilean  Church  made  this  adaptation,  and  became  the 
Church  of  the  Frankish  Empire. 

In  the  later  Middle  Ages,  there  was  no  abuse  more 
flagrant  than  those  which  resulted  from  what  is  called 
the  "benefit  of  clergy" — that  is,  the  right  which  a 
man  who  could  read  had,  when  put  on  trial  for  a  crime 
or  misdemeanor,  of  pleading  that  the  State  Court  had 
no  jurisdiction  over  him,  because  he  was  a  clergyman. 
And  yet,  if  we  look  to  the  origin  of  that  right  in  this 
period,  we  shall  see  that  it  sprang  from  the  condition 
of  all  law  at  this  time.  It  is  the  glory  of  modern  law 
that  it  is  the  "  law  of  the  land,"  and  therefore  that  it 
administers  equal  justice  to  all  the  inhabitants  of  the 
land.  Barbarian  law,  on  the  other  hand,  was  the  law 
of  the  tribe.  The  Salian  Frank  had  one  law,  the 
Ripuarian  Frank  another,  the  Burgundian  another,  the 
Visigoth  another,  the  Romanized  Gaul  another  ;  and 
the  individual  was  judged  by  the  law  of  his  tribe  or 
race.  Now  all  these  laws  were  in  their  origin  heathen 
laws,  and  although  they  adopted  Christian  elements  in 
course  of  time,  yet  there  was  much  in  them  that  was 
not  applicable  to  the  circumstances  of  the  clergy  and 
monastic  bodies,  and  many  rules  necessary  for  these, 
that  were  not  applicable  to  the  layman.     In  the  rude 


156     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

idea  of  law,  therefore,  which  prevailed,  it  was  the 
easiest  and  the  best  to  decide  that  as  the  Frank  was 
judged  by  Frank  law,  and  the  Goth  by  Gothic  law,  and 
the  Roman  by  Roman  law,  so  the  Churchman  should 
be  judged  by  canon  law.  Traditions  inherited  from  the 
Empire  favored  this  claim.  Constantius  had  ordered, 
as  early  as  355,  that  bishops  should  be  tried  by  bishops, 
and  other  emperors  gave  the  bishops  jurisdiction  over 
the  clergy  in  minor  offences,  and  in  civil  causes — their 
ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  over  their  morals  and  spiritual 
duties  being  inherent  in  their  office.  As  the  Roman 
law  was  admitted  for  the  Roman  population,  these 
exemptions  were  allowed  for  the  clergy,  and  they 
naturally  wrought  to  create  a  civil  and  criminal  juris- 
diction for  the  clergy,  as  a  class,  on  the  same  principles 
as  the  law  of  the  tribe.  It  marks  the  honesty  of  those 
who  made  this  claim,  that  the  penalties  in  the  peni- 
tentials  were  much  more  severe  upon  the  clergyman 
than  upon  the  layman  for  the  same  offence.  Where  a 
layman  would  have  three  years'  penance,  a  clerk  would 
have  ten  years  ;  and  when  a  deacon  would  have  six,  a 
priest  would  have  ten,  and  a  bishop  twelve. 

Then  again,  the  right  of  sanctuary — a  right  which 
had  belonged  to  the  heathen  temples — was  naturally 
conceded  to  the  Christian  churches,  and  served  a  most 
useful  purpose  when  the  right  of  private  war  and  per- 
sonal revenge  existed.  The  very  demand  to  surrender 
a  fugitive  would  give  the  Church  the  opportunity  to 
investigate  the  matter,  to  appeal  to  the  conscience  of 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation,      i  5  7 

the  wrong-doer  and  bring  him  to  repentance,  to  pro- 
tect the  weak,  and  to  preach  the  gospel  of  justice  and 
mercy  to  the  pursuer.  It  was  a  most  important  right 
for  the  Church  to  possess  in  those  turbulent  times. 
And  so,  too,  the  attempt  to  secure  immunity  from  the 
devastations  of  war  for  the  estates  of  the  Church  was 
in  the  interests  of  the  people  even  more  than  of  the 
clergy.  It  saved  the  inhabitants  of  the  devastated  lay 
lands  from  famine,  by  enabling  the  Church  to  extend 
charity  to  them  ;  it  restricted  the  area  of  war  and 
plunder,  and  it  taught  the  blessings  of  peace.  And 
therefore  the  possession  of  vast  estates  by  the  Church 
was  a  good  and  not  an  evil  in  these  times.  Land  was 
of  little  value  ;  there  was  more  of  it  than  the  popula- 
tion could  make  use  of;  vast  areas  which  had  been 
under  cultivation  fell  back  into  the  wilderness  ;  the 
Church  was  a  good  landlord,  and  under  its  fostering 
care  the  tenants  of  its  estates  were  enabled  to  reclaim 
them  and  bring  them  into  use,  and  the  revenues  de- 
rived from  the  rents  paid  in  kind  were  used  for  the 
support  of  divine  worship,  for  the  charities  of  life,  and 
for  the  good  of  the  poor.  The  time  had  not  yet  come 
for  prince-bishops  and  their  luxury,  and  the  holders  of 
these  vast  estates  were  the  most  self-denying  of  men. 

The  union  of  Church  and  State,  however,  among  the 
Franks,  as  in  the  Empire,  produced  immense  disorders 
in  the  Church,  and  the  change  in  the  clergy  was  great 
when  the  Austrasian  influence  became  predominant. 
The  battle  of  Testry  (A.  D.  687)  gave  the  Austrasians 


1 58     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

under  Pepin  of  Heristal  the  hegemony  of  the  Franks, 
and  the  kingdom  became  more  German  than  it  had 
been.  The  Franks  were  a  much  larger  proportion  of 
the  population  in  Austrasia,  than  in  Neustria,  Burgundy 
or  Aquitaine,  and  the  manners  and  customs  were  Ger- 
man rather  than  Roman.  It  was  on  this  side  that  the 
frontier  of  the  kingdom  needed  to  be  defended  against 
the  heathen  tribes  beyond  the  Rhine  ;  the  Austrasians 
therefore  were  more  warlike,  and  their  chiefs,  as  leaders 
in  war,  and  governors  of  the  conquered  people,  had 
larger  opportunities  than  those  settled  in  the  other 
divisions  of  the  kingdom,  and  had  become  a  military 
aristocracy  with  vast  territorial  possessions.  It  seems 
to  have  been  in  Austrasia  that  the  peculiarly  feudal  idea 
developed  itself  that  government  and  ownership  went 
together,  that  government  implied  ownership,  and 
ownership  implied  government,  and  therefore  that  he 
who  was  appointed  governor  of  a  district  was  in  some 
way  vested  with  the  ownership  of  the  land  and  people — 
not  exactly  as  slaves,  but  as  vassals — and  must  there- 
fore, if  possible,  make  his  dominion  hereditary  in  his 
family.  In  Neustria,  the  chief  nobles  were  Counts,  as 
companions  of  the  king  ;  in  Austrasia,  they  took  the 
title  o{  Dukes,  as  leaders  of  the  host.  They  were  more 
independent  of  the  central  authority,  and  at  the  same 
time  less  disposed  to  respect  the  rights  of  the  freemen, 
whom  they  gradually  reduced  to  a  state  of  vassalage. 
Pepin  of  Heristal,  although  mayor  of  the  palace  to  the 
titular  king  (who  from  this  time  ceased  to  be   of  any 


F'7'-om  Constantine  to  the  Reformation,      159 

importance),  was  only  the  first  among  the  Austrasian 
nobles,  and  his  authority  was  precarious  unless  he  could 
keep  them  employed  in  national  wars,  while  he  was  con- 
solidating the  kingdom.  He  therefore  convened  the 
national  assembly  of  the  Franks  with  greater  regularity 
than  of  late  ;  he  employed  the  arms  of  those  dukes  who 
attended  it  to  reduce  those  who  remained  away,  and  to 
extend  the  Frank  influence  beyond  the  Rhine  ;  he  him- 
self made  his  residence  at  Cologne,  rather  than  at  Metz, 
that  he  might  be  more  in  the  midst  of  the  Germans, 
while  he  established  his  authority  in  Neustria  by  making 
his  son  mayor  of  the  palace  of  Neustria,  and  in  Bur- 
gundy by  making  another  son  duke  of  Burgundy.  But 
the  records  of  his  government  are  too  scanty  to  give  a 
complete  view  of  his  policy.  It  is  evident,  however, 
that  in  his  time,  and  in  that  of  his  more  celebrated  son, 
Charles  Martel,  the  ecclesiastical  interest  was  quite 
subordinate  to  the  military,  and  that  an  increasing  sec- 
ularity  of  the  clergy  was  incident  to  the  period.  The 
Church  among  the  Austrasians  was  more  Frank  and 
less  Gallic  than  in  the  other  kingdoms,  and  therefore 
more  easily  fell  into  the  shape  of  an  aristocratic  estab- 
lishment, the  benefices  of  which  were  appanages  of  the 
great  families. 

For  just  as  soon  as  the  bishops  became  possessed  of 
political  influence  by  being  admitted  to  the  assembly  of 
the  leudes,  two  things  happened  :  first,  the  ruling  au- 
thority in  the  State  began  to  treat  the  estates  of  the 
Church  as  benefices  held  of  the  crown,  and  to  take  the 


1 6o     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

appointment  of  the  bishops  to  itself,  notwithstanding 
the  canons  providing  for  free  elections  ;  and  secondly, 
the  dignities  of  the  Church  began  to  be  an  object  of 
desire  to  those  of  the  Franks  who  sought  wealth  and 
influence,  and  whose  names,  it  is  remarked,  begin  to 
appear  in  the  lists  of  bishops  in  the  seventh  century. 
Bishops  therefore  were  now  chosen  because  of  their 
political  connections,  and  their  relation  to  the  aristoc- 
racy, rather  than  for  their  merit  as  ecclesiastics  ;  and 
these  bishops  looked  upon  the  wealth  of  the  Church  as 
their  own  personal  property,  rather  than  as  a  trust  for 
the  common  good.  At  the  same  time  the  priests  of  the 
parochial  churches  were  seldom  chosen  from  the  Franks 
— indeed  there  were  laws  against  the  ordination  of  those 
who  were  liable  to  military  service — but  very  frequently 
from  the  serfs  attached  to  the  Church  land,  or  from  their 
children,  who  were  brought  up  to  the  service  of  the 
Church,  and  educated  in  monasteries  or  in  the  priests' 
houses.  These  clergy  were  in  no  condition  to  assert 
themselves  against  the  bishops,  and  they  gradually  fell 
to  an  inferior  place  ;  as  the  bishops  became  wealthy  and 
great,  the  priests  became  poor  and  mean.  In  propor- 
tion, too,  as  the  bishops  exercised  political  influence  in 
the  national  assemblies,  where  they  met  their  metro- 
politans on  terms  of  equality,  the  authority  of  the 
metropolitans  declined,  and  the  Councils  of  the  Church 
became  less  frequent.  In  the  sixth  century,  fifty-four 
Councils  were  held  in  Gaul,  while  in  the  seventh  there 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      i6l 

were  only  twenty,*  and  in  the  eighth,  before  Boniface 
began  the  reform  of  the  Prankish  Church,  none. 
Finally,  this  class  of  ecclesiastics  introduced  into  the 
clerical  order  the  ideas  of  the  Franks  in  regard  to  the 
right  to  bear  arms.  This  right  was  the  distinctive 
attribute  of  the  freeman,  as  the  deprivation  of  it  was  the 
mark  of  the  serf;  and  the  member  of  a  noble  Frank 
family  would  be  loth  to  surrender  it,  even  though  it  was 
incompatible  with  the  sacred  calling.  The  disorder  of 
the  Church  reached  its  height  when  Charles  Martel  was 
mayor  of  the  palace  and  real  ruler  of  the  Franks.  He 
had  been  passed  over  by  his  father  in  his  dispositions 
for  the  future  at  the  approach  of  death,  because  of  his 
illegitimacy,  and  he  felt  himself  for  that  reason  to  be 
under  the  ban  of  the  Church,  and  resented  it  accord- 
ingly ;  and  therefore,  when  he  had  won  his  way  by  his 
military  skill  to  the  leadership,  he  laid  a  heavy  hand 
upon  the  Church's  possessions.  He  treated  them  as 
military  benefices,  and  bestowed  them  upon  his  captains, 
who  held  them  as  bishops-elect  upon  receiving  the 
tonsure,  but  never  proceeded  to  ordination,  and  per- 
formed no  episcopal  acts  and  were  not  really  bishops, 
though  they  bore  the  name.f  The  consequence  was 
that  discipline  fell  entirely  into  abeyance  ;  for  eighty 
years,  it  is  said,  no  Councils  were  held  in  Austrasia ; 
the  so-called   bishops  led   the  lives  of  secular  nobles, 

*  Guizot,  II.     26g. 

f  This  must  be   remembered   in   justice   to   the  Church  of  that  age. 
Sismondi,  p.  191. 

11 


1 62     Christejidom  Ecclesiastical  a?id  Political 

and  the  real  bishops  were  worldly  and  affected  by  their 
associations  ;  the  priesthood  sank  into  ignorance  and 
immorality  ;  and  the  Frankish  Church  ceased  to  exert 
an  influence  upon  the  laity  favorable  to  true  religion. 

But  we  cannot  read  the  history  of  God's  Church,  even 
in  the  darkest  ages,  believing  that  it  is  God's  Church, 
and  that  our  blessed  Lord  is  its  Head  and  Life,  without 
tracing  the  lines  of  His  Providence  which  run  through 
the  tangled  web  of  human  affairs.  Influences  were 
being  prepared  at  this  very  time  for  a  reformation  of  the 
Church,  and  for  the  complicated  history  of  the  ages 
which  were  to  follow  ;  and  some  of  those  influences, 
and  they  not  the  least  effective  for  good  under  the  cir- 
cumstances of  succeeding  periods,  were  born  of  this 
very  condition  of  the  Church.  The  idea  of  the  national 
Church  was  kept  alive,  and  enabled  to  resist  the  Papal 
usurpation  through  this  dependence  of  the  benefices  of 
the  Church  upon  the  sovereign,  although  it  was  the 
cause  of  corruption  at  this  time  ;  and  the  contest  of  in- 
vestitures had  its  roots  thus  far  back  in  the  past.  We 
speak  of  the  time  of  Luther  and  Calvin  and  Cranmer  as 
the  period  of  the  Reformation  ;  but  in  so  speaking  we 
take  too  narrow  a  view.  The  period  of  the  Reformation 
extends  from  Charlemagne  to  the  present  day,  and  is 
not  yet  completed — perhaps  it  never  will  be  completed 
while  the  Church  is  in  her  militant  estate.  The  para- 
bles of  the  tares  amid  the  wheat,  and  of  the  net  enclos- 
ing the  good  fish  and  the  bad,  forbid  us  to  expect  the 
perfect  Church  on  earth.     Let  it  be  our  consolation  that 


Prom  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      163 

the  imperfect  Church  somehow  does  its  work  ;  and  that 
the  continually  recurring-  fact  of  reformation  is  the 
evidence  of  the  Church's  vitality.  A  teacher  to  whom 
I  look  with  reverence  *  used  to  say  in  my  seminary  days, 
that  there  is  no  reformation  which  does  not,  after  a 
time,  need  to  be  reformed  ;  in  other  words,  that  the 
Church,  preserving  its  divine  order  and  essentials,  needs 
to  be  adjusted  in  mutable  things  to  the  successive  ages 
through  which  it  lives.  View  the  period  from  Char- 
lemagne to  that  which  we  call  the  Reformation  in  this 
light,  and  it  will  not  seem  the  hopeless  waste  that 
ordinary  Protestantism  thinks  it.  The  great  move- 
ments were  attempts  at  reformation.  There  was  first 
the  Imperialist  Reformation — the  new  Imperialism  of 
Charlemagne.  Then,  as  that  failed,  as  fail  it  must,  there 
was  the  Papalist  Reformation  of  Hildebrand.  Then 
there  was  the  attempt  to  reform  by  Councils,  at  Con- 
stance, Basle,  etc.  Then  there  was  the  attempt  to 
reform  by  national  and  isolated  action.  And  now  in 
this  country,  God  is  leading  us  on  our  path  of  reform, 
separating  the  Church  from  the  State,  giving  us  to  de- 
pend on  His  own  institutions  of  the  Apostolic  Ministry, 
the  unmutilated  Sacraments,  and  the  Faith  once  deliv- 
ered to  the  saints,  and  enabling  us  to  adapt  ourselves 
to  the  needs  of  the  new  world  and  the  new  race  which 
is  to  inhabit  it. 

These   great   movements   for   reform   began  with  a 

♦The  Rev.  William  Adams,  D.D.,  of  Nashotah. 


1 64     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

member  of  our  mother  Church  of  England,  the  great 
missionary,  Winfred  or  St.  Boniface. 

The  action  and  reaction  of  the  several  parts  of  the 
Church  upon  each  other  while  Catholic  communion  is 
preserved,  and  the  providential  ordering  of  events  dis- 
tant in  time  and  place,  as  well  as  close  at  hand,  to  assist 
in  need,  are  among  the  facts  which  ecclesiastical  history 
sets  before  us  as  evidences  of  the  Divine  superintendence, 
as  well  as  of  the  Divine  institution  of  the  Church  Cath- 
olic. While  the  Prankish  Church  was  dealing  in  its 
own  way  with  its  peculiar  problems,  and  approaching 
the  condition  in  which  it  needed  the  infusion  of  new 
blood,  so  to  speak,  and  help  from  without,  that  help  was 
being  provided  for,  and  the  principles  which  were  to 
dominate  the  next  age  were  being  formulated  under 
equally  peculiar  circumstances.  I  shall  have  occasion 
in  another  lecture  to  consider  the  history  of  the  English 
Church,  and  need  not  dwell  upon  it  at  present.  You 
all  know  the  story  of  Gregory  the  Great  and  his  interest 
in  the  Anglo-Saxons,  of  the  mission  of  Augustine  and 
his  monks,  the  conversion  of  King  Ethelbert,  and  the 
founding  of  the  see  of  Canterbury.  I  do  not  think  that 
Ethelbert  was  quite  as  ignorant  of  Christianity  as  that 
story  supposes,  seeing  that  he  had  had  for  twenty-five 
years  a  bishop  at  his  court  as  chaplain  to  his  queen 
Bertha  ;  and  there  is  some  evidence  that  he  or  Bertha 
sent  to  Rome  requesting  missionaries,  not  wishing  to 
receive  them  from  the  neighboring  Frank  kingdom. 
But  what  I  want  to  point  out  to  you  now  is,  that  these 


From  Constantiiie  to  the  Reformation.      165 

Roman  missionaries  carried  to  England  the  views  of  the 
Western  Patriarchate  and  the  primacy  of  Rome  which 
were  then  current  at  Rome,  the  development  of  which 
we  traced  in  the  last  lecture.  These  views  had  by  this 
time  ceased  to  influence  the  churches  in  the  new  nations 
of  the  West.  What  they  were,  and  their  limitations  in 
the  time  of  Gregory  the  Great,  we  know  very  well  from 
Gregory's  own  words  in  remonstrating  against  the 
assumption  of  the  title  Ecumenical  Patriarch  by  John 
the  Faster  of  Constantinople.  Gregory  not  only  did 
not  hold  the  papalist  theory  of  later  times,  but  he  was 
more  humble  than  some  of  his  predecessors  in  the 
assertion  of  prerogatives  which  had  been  previously 
claimed,  and  it  is  evident  that  the  Roman  see  had  suf- 
fered in  the  decay  of  the  city,  and  its  subjection  to  the 
Eastern  empire.  But  the  views  carried  to  England  by 
the  Roman  missionaries  were  the  Roman  views  ;  and  so 
it  turned  out  that  the  newly-converted  Anglo-Saxon 
Church  was  the  most  Roman  in  Western  Christendom. 
It  was  not  Papahst — because  Rome  itself  was  not  Papa- 
list  at  this  time — that  must  be  distinctly  understood  ; 
but  it  was  devoted  to  Rome  out  of  gratitude  for  its 
missionary  charity,  and  it  willingly  submitted  to  the 
Roman  primacy.  There  was  another  reason  also,  why 
in  the  south  of  England  the  Roman  ideas  should  prevail. 
Conformity  to  the  see  of  Rome  in  the  observance  of 
Easter  and  other  matters  gave  the  Anglo-Saxons  an 
advantage  in  their  controversies  with  the  ancient  British 
Church,  which  represented  a  more  ancient  type  of  or- 


1 66     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Poiilical 

ganization  and  usage  ;  and  which,  therefore,  could  be 
faulted  as  schismatical,  because  not  in  accord  with  the 
Church  universal  on  those  points  in  regard  to  which, 
from  its  insular  and  isolated  position,  it  had  been  cut  off 
from  the  general  movement  of  Christendom.  The  Eng- 
lish Church,  therefore,  was  led  to  insist  on  the  Roman 
connection,  and  its  missionaries  being  imbued  with  the 
principles  in  which  they  were  educated,  advanced  the 
credit  of  the  Roman  see  in  their  different  fields  of  labor. 
The  mission  of  Augustine  to  England,  therefore,  was 
the  most  important  event  for  Rome  in  this  period  ;  it 
was  the  direct  cause  of  the  revival  of  the  Western 
Patriarchate,  and  of  the  alliance  between  Pepin  and 
Charlemagne  and  the  Roman  see  ;  and  it  is  satisfactory 
to  the  candid  mind  to  know  that  it  was  the  outgrowth 
of  true  Christian  zeal,  and  not  of  the  ambition  which  is 
usually  attributed  to  the  successors  of  St.  Peter. 

St.  Boniface  (Winfred  was  his  Saxon  name)  was  born 
in  the  year  680,  when  Theodore  of  Tarsus  was  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury.  Among  the  benefits  conferred 
by  the  see  of  Rome  upon  the  early  English  Church, 
not  the  least  was  the  sending  that  learned  and  vener- 
able Greek  to  be  its  primate.  By  his  wise  exertions, 
the  English  Church  was  united,  discipline  was  regu- 
lated, good  schools  were  established,  and  learning  was 
in  a  better  state  than  in  any  other  part  of  Western 
Christendom.*     Not  only  Latin,  but  Greek  was  studied, 

*  Perhaps  I  ought  to  except  Ireland.  See  Stokes,  Ireland  and  the 
Celtic  Church,  ch.  xi.,  and  remember  that  John  Scotus  Erigena  was  an 
Iiishman. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      167 

and  England  produced  some  scholars  like  Bede  and 
Alcuin,  who  were  the  foremost  of  their  age.  Boniface 
profited  by  this  movement ;  he  had  the  best  training 
that  could  be  given  at  the  time  ;  and  he  had  examples 
to  kindle  his  missionary  zeal  in  men  like  Willibrord, 
who  devoted  their  lives  to  the  propagation  of  the 
Gospel  among  the  heathen  tribes  of  the  continent  who 
were  akin  to  the  Saxons.  After  one  or  two  attempts 
(he  labored  for  a  time  with  Willibrord)  Boniface  paid 
a  visit  to  Rome,  and  received  a  commission  from 
Gregory  II.  (A.  D.  718)  to  preach  to  the  German  tribes 
who  were  still  heathen.  In  a  few  years,  having  been 
very  successful,  he  was  summoned  again  to  Rome  and 
made  a  "regionary"  or  missionary  bishop.  The  oath 
of  canonical  obedience  which  he  took  at  his  ordination 
has  been  made  more  of  in  controversial  discussion  than 
there  is  occasion  for.  It  is  said  to  be  the  first  ever 
required  by  the  Pope  of  a  bishop  who  was  not  properly 
subject  to  him  as  metropolitan,  and  it  was  made  the 
precedent  for  requiring  the  same  oath  of  other  bishops  ; 
but  at  the  time  it  had  not  the  significance  which  was 
afterwards  attached  to  it.  It  was  the  usual  oath  of 
canonical  obedience  taken  by  a  bishop  to  the  Metro- 
politan ordaining  him,  with  the  necessary  changes 
adapting  it  to  a  missionary  bishop,  who  would  other- 
wise be  autonomous  and  irresponsible.  Returning  to 
Germany,  he  prosecuted  his  work  with  still  greater 
vigor  and  success,  and  by  738  he  had  baptized  a  hun- 
dred thousand  converts.     Gregory  III.  gave  him  the 


1 68     Ch^'istendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

pall  of  an  archbishop,  and  authorized  him  to  organize 
the  Church  in  his  missionary  field,  which  he  did  by- 
founding  four  Episcopal  sees. 

By  this  means  there  was  a  German  Church  east  of 
the  Austrasian,  free  from  its  traditions,  and  with  a 
tradition  of  its  own — as,  I  think,  the  Austrasian  Church 
had  a  character  different  in  some  respects  from  that 
in  the  older  part  of  Gaul.  By  that  German  Church, 
Boniface  was  able  to  act  on  the  Frankish  Church  for  its 
reformation  ;  he  had  imbued  it  with  that  reverence  for 
Rome  which  he  had  learned  in  England,  and  he  was 
able  to  use  the  authority  of  Rome  in  dealing  with  the 
abuses  which  had  reduced  the  Austrasian  Church  to 
such  a  deplorable  condition.  On  the  death  of  Charles 
Martel,  Pope  Zachary  made  him  Vicar  Apostolic  for 
the  kingdom  of  the  Franks,  and  he  secured  the  co- 
operation of  Carloman  and  Pepin,  who  had  succeeded 
to  the  power  of  their  father,  the  one  as  Mayor  of 
Austrasia,  and  the  other  as  Mayor  of  Neustria.  In  742 
he  held  a  Council,  which  is  said  to  be  the  first  held  in 
Austrasia  for  80  years,  and  from  that  time  there  was  an 
improvement  in  the  P'rankish  Church.  The  see  of 
Mcntz  or  Mayence  becoming  vacant  he  was  made 
Archbishop  and  Primate  of  the  German  Church.  But 
the  missionary  spirit  was  still  strong  within  him  ;  he 
resigned  his  see,  and  lost  his  life  among  the  heathen  of 
Frisia. 

Now  whatever  may  have  been  the  ideas  of  the  Roman 
primacy  which  remained  in  the  Gallic  Church  from  the 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      169 

time  of  the  Empire  and  the  edict  of  Valentinian  III., 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  they  were  hazy  and  indefi- 
nite, and  had  no  effect  upon  the  Church  of  the  Franks 
until  Boniface  reintroduced  them  and  made  them  prac- 
tical. Once  introduced  they  bore  fruit.  Pepin  saw  in 
them  a  means  of  furthering  his  political  designs.  In 
747  his  brother  Carloman,  Mayor  of  Austrasia,  retired 
from  active  life  and  became  a  monk,  and  Pepin,  who  had 
been  Mayor  of  Neustria,  ruling  in  the  name  of  Childeric 
III.,  became  sole  chief  of  all  the  Franks.  The  time  had 
come  when  the  puppets  of  the  Merovingian  line  might 
be  laid  aside  ;  but  it  must  be  done  prudently.  The 
Austrasians  had  lost  their  respect  for  them,  but  the 
Neustrians  were  still  attached  to  them  ;  and  as  the 
political  influence  of  the  Church  was  greater  among  the 
Roman  population  of  Neustria  than  among  the  Germans 
of  Austrasia,  it  was  desirable  that  the  primate  of  the 
whole  Church  should  declare  the  expediency  of  the 
change  that  was  to  be  made.  I  have  here  again  to 
caution  you  against  importing  into  this  transaction  the 
ideas  of  a  later  time.  Pepin  knew  well  the  situation  of 
the  Bishop  of  Rome.  The  Lombards  were  pressing  hard 
upon  him.  The  Eastern  Empire  was  unable  to  defend 
its  Italian  provinces  against  them.  Gregory  II.  had 
made  an  effort  to  organize  an  Italian  Republic  by  the 
union  of  the  cities  against  the  invader  and  had  failed. 
Application  had  been  made  to  Charles  Martel  for 
assistance,  but  he  had  been  unable  or  unwilling  to  make 
war  upon  the  Lombards.     The  Bishop  of  Rome  stood 


1  Jo    C hristendo7n  Ecclcsiaslical  ana  Political 

in  need  of  a  powerful  friend.  Pepin  was  sure  of  his 
ground  ;  and  the  Bishop  of  Rome's  answer  to  his  ques- 
tion in  political  casuistry  would  be  of  authority  with  the 
Neustrian  and  German  Churchmen.  He  therefore  sent 
to  Rome  the  chief  ecclesiastics  of  his  palace  "  to  con- 
sult Pope  Zachary  concerning  the  kings  of  the  Franks, 
who  for  a  considerable  time  had  borne  the  name  with- 
out any  authority,  viz  :  Whether  it  was  convenient 
that  affairs  should  continue  in  this  state  ?  The  Pope 
replied  that  for  the  better  maintaining  of  order,  it 
would  be  best  to  give  the  name  of  king  to  him  who  had 
the  power." "'  The  answer  was  satisfactory ;  the 
phantom  king  was  tonsured  and  consigned  to  a  mon- 
astery ;  Pepin  was  lifted  on  the  shield  according  to 
Frank  usage,  (A.  D.,  752,)  and  anointed  and  crowned 
King  of  the  Franks  by  Archbishop  Boniface, t  as  the 
Eastern  Emperors  were  anointed  and  crowned  by  the 
Bishop  of  Constantinople.  In  two  years  the  Bishop  of 
Rome  received  his  reward.  He  made  a  journey  into 
France  (Stephen  HI.  in  A.  D.,  754)  to  solicit  aid  against 
the  Lombards.  He  was  received  with  honor  ;  he 
crowned  the  king  a  second  time  ;   and  Pepin   led  his 

*Fleury,  B.  XLIII,  Ch.  i. 

f  Robertson  doubts  that  Boniface  had  anything  to  do  with  this  affair  ; 
others,  as  Guizot,  positively  assert  that  he  did.  The  difficulty  that  Rob- 
ertson finds  may  be  explained  by  the  relation  of  Pepin  to  the  Neustrian 
Church,  where  the  influence  of  Boniface  Was  less  than  in  Germany  and 
Austrasia.  I  think  we  mistake  when  we  speak  of  the  Frank  Church  as  a 
whole,  and  attrilnite  to  all  what  is  true  of  a  part.  It  seems  to  me  that* 
the  Neustrian  Church  w.-is  different  in  character  from  the  Austrasian,  and 
perhaps  not  in  so  much  disorder. 


From  Constant ine  to  the  Reformation,     1 7 1 

Franks  into  Lombardy,  and  compelled  the  King  of  the 
Lombards  to  cede  to  the  Pope  all  the  territories  of 
which  he  had  deprived  the  Empire  in  late  years.* 

Pepin  died  in  y^^,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  two  sons 
Carloman  and  Charles.  Carloman  died  in  771,  and 
Charles  set  aside  his  young  children,  and  became  sole 
king.  The  influence  of  that  extraordinary  man  upon 
the  subsequent  history  of  Europe — of  the  man  whose 
greatness  has  been  recognized  by  the  unique  honor  of 
incorporating  the  term  "  the  Great "  into  his  very  name, 
"  Charlemagne " — will  come  before  us  in  the  next 
lecture. 

*On  the  forged  donation  of  Constantine,  and  the  forgeries  connected 
with  the  donation  of  Pepin,  see  DoUinger,  Fables  of  the  Popes. 


IV. 
THE   NEW  IMPERIALISM. 


IV. 

THE  NEW  IMPERIALISM. 


Charlemagne  was,  take  him  all  in  all,  incomparably 
the  greatest  man  that  Europe  has  seen  since  the  years 
were  counted  by  the  Christian  era.  Not  only  by  his 
wonderful  physical  activity,  his  tremendous  energy  in 
war,  his  extension  of  the  area  of  the  Prankish  dominion, 
his  making  himself  Emperor  ;  but  by  his  administrative 
ability,  his  intellectual  vigor,  his  untiring  efforts  to 
elevate  and  benefit  his  people,  his  unceasing  attention 
to  all  details  of  government,  his  success  in  securing  the 
obedience  of  his  subjects,  his  sense  of  the  value  of  edu- 
cation and  learning  and  his  endeavors  to  promote  them, 
his  determination  to  reform  the  Church,  and  his  author- 
ity over  the  hierarchy,  including  the  Bishop  of  Rome 
himself — by  the  rightness  of  his  aims,  the  conscientious- 
ness of  his  efforts,  and  the  real  religiousness  of  his  spirit, 
as  well  as  the  grandeur  of  his  personality,  and  the  im- 
mensity of  his  capacity  for  work,  he  merits  the  title 
bestowed  upon  him,  without  any  abatement  for  the  age 
in  which  he  lived,  or  the  people  over  whom  he  ruled. 
I  know,  of  course,  the  blots  upon  his  fame.  He  uncere- 
moniously set  aside  the  children  of  his  brother  ;  he  put 


I  76    ChristendoDi  Ecclesiastical  a7id  Political 

to  death  four  thousand  five  hundred  Saxon  prisoners  in 
cold  blood  ;  his  matrimonial  relations  were  those  of  a 
Frank  king.  But  no  man  is  perfect.  The  probability 
is  that  his  age  and  his  people  were  with  him  in  all  these 
matters.  Charlemagne  was  a  born  ruler  of  men.  Gov- 
ernment was  as  much  an  instinct  to  him  as  poetry  with 
Shakespeare.  He  held  the  ascendancy  over  other  men 
by  the  greatness  of  his  genius,  the  genuineness  of  his 
moBal  nature,  the  strength  of  his  purpose,  and  the  sin- 
cerity of  his  efforts  to  give  order  to  the  body  politic. 
He  was  too  great  to  be  selfish,  too  great  to  be  jealous, 
and  men  obeyed  him  spontaneously,  and  loved  him  not 
a  little.  The  parallel  has  been  drawn  between  him  and 
David  the  great  King  of  Israel,  and  it  would  seem  that 
he  himself  was  conscious  of  the  resemblance,  and  took 
David  for  his  model.  He  had  strong  affections  as  well 
as  a  stern  will,  a  shrewd  practical  insight  as  well  as 
great  ideas,  he  could  manage  an  empire  as  well  as  a 
farm,  and  attend  to  the  details  of  a  farm  in  the  midst  of 
the  cares  of  an  empire.  A  German  of  the  Germans,  a 
Frank  through  and  through,  he  governed  his  people 
through  their  own  institutions  without  jealousy,  and 
converted  them  into  the  institutions  of  the  Empire 
without  revolution.  He  called  his  bishops  and  nobles 
and  freemen  to  the  National  Assembly  twice  a  year,  in 
May  and  August,  and  in  their  presence  and  with  their 
counsel,  he  surveyed  the  state  of  his  vast  dominions, 
determined  what  legislation  was  needed  for  Church  and 
State,  and  what  warlike   expedition  was  necessary  to 


From  Contsantiiie  to  the  Reformation.      177 

keep  the  enemies  of  the  Empire  in  check,  or  to  reduce 
the  rebellious.  His  wars  with  the  heathen  Saxons  on 
the  north,  the  Huns  and  Avars  on  the  east,  the  Lom- 
bards in  Italy,  and  the  Saracens  in  Spain,  though 
aggressive  in  their  conduct,  were  defensive  in  purpose, 
and  his  fifty-three  campaigns,  ruthlessly  as  they  were 
carried  on,  were  in  the  interest  of  order  against  lawless- 
ness, of  civilization  against  barbarism,  of  Christianity 
against  heathenism  and  Mohammedanism.  In  the 
work  of  administration  and  government  he  was  equally 
untiring.  When  we  turn  to  the  vast  collection  of  his 
capitularies,  and  note  the  multitude  of  matters  to  which 
he  gave  personal  attention,  the  wonder  is,  that  a  man 
who  seems  to  have  spent  his  whole  life  in  war  could  do 
more  than  a  life's  work  in  endeavoring  to  reform  and 
advance  his  people.  He  evidently  had  no  cut  and  dried 
theory;  but  he  obeyed  the  mandate  of  Scripture : 
"Whatsoever  thy  hand  findeth  to  do,  do  it  with  thy 
might."  He  set  himself  to  strengthen  the  existing 
institutions  in  Church  and  State  ;  he  was  urgent  in 
requiring  that  schools  should  be  opened  in  every  parish, 
where  the  children  of  the  poor,  as  well  as  those  of  the 
rich,  could  learn  what  there  was  to  learn  at  the  time ; 
he  established  a  school  in  the  palace  as  a  model,  in 
which  he  was  himself  a  scholar,  and  he  took  into  his 
service  the  learned  men  whom  he  could  find  and  induce 
to  come  to  him,  that  they  might  advance  learning  in 
his  dominions.  He  sent  his  missi  doniinici  (the  origi- 
nals of  our  Circuit  Courts  and   Circuit  Judges)    upon 


lyS     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

regular  circuits  to  inspect  the  conduct  of  his  officers, 
and  to  administer  justice  in  his  name;  and  when  he  took 
to  himself  the  title  and  state  of  Emperor,  I  have  no 
doubt  whatever  that  his  object  was  less  personal  am- 
bition than  the  good  of  his  people.  What  was  wanted 
in  that  turbulent  age  was  a  central  authority  strong 
enough  to  keep  in  order  the  military  aristocracy,  and 
to  blend  into  one  the  various  nationalities  over  which 
the  rule  of  the  Franks  extended,  and  that  central 
authority  Charlemagne  thought  he  found  in  the  impe- 
rial prerogative. 

The  influence  of  Charlemagne  upon  Christendom  and 
the  Church  is  our  present  inquiry.  The  first  and  great- 
est element  of  that  influence  was  his  assumption  of  the 
Empire.  It  was  supposed  to  be  the  "  Holy  Roman 
Empire,"  but  it  was  in  reality  the  German  Empire  ;  for 
though  it  suffered  eclipse  in  the  age  succeeding  Char- 
lemagne, the  idea  did  not  die  ;  it  took  root  and  revived, 
and  was,  with  the  Papacy,  the  chief  factor  in  the  history 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  I  speak  of  Charlemagne's  assump- 
tion of  the  Empire,  and  I  do  so  advisedly.  It  is  true 
that  Pope  Leo  surprised  him  on  that  memorable 
Christmas  Day  of  the  year  800,  by  suddenly  placing 
upon  his  head  during  Divine  Service  the  imperial  crown, 
and  that  Charles  afterwards  expressed  his  disapproval 
of  the  act.  There  is  no  reason  for  accusing  him  of  dis- 
simulation or  collusion  in  so  doing ;  but  unless  he  had 
had  the  idea  of  making  himself  Emperor,  he  would  not 
have  been  forced  into  it  by  the  unauthorized  act  of  the 


From  Constantme  to  the  Reformation.      1 79 

Roman  pontiff.  My  own  opinion  is  that  Charles  was 
really  offended  at  the  Bishop  of  Rome's  intermeddling, 
and  that  for  the  very  reason  that  he  intended  the 
Empire  to  come  to  him  in  a  different  way.*  There  is 
evidence  that  his  intimates  expected  him  to  become 
emperor  at  this  time  (Alcuin's  Bible  is  well-known), 
to  show  that  it  was  in  his  mind ;  and  it  is  of  great  sig- 
nificance that  when  he  associated  his  son  Louis  with 
himself,  as  he  felt  age  and  infirmity  growing  upon  him, 
he  made  Louis  take  the  crown  himself  from  the  altar, 
and  put  it  upon  his  own  head.  That  act  shows  Charle- 
magne's idea  of  the  imperial  authority,  and  his  determi- 
nation that  it  should  not  vest  in  the  Roman  pontiff  to 
bestow  it.  It  seems  as  if  he  had  a  prescience  of 
claims  that  were  afterwards  to  be  set  up,  and  was  re- 
solved to  guard  against  them. 

The  time  was  propitious,  and  the  motives  sufficient 
for  the  assumption  of  the  title.  In  the  long  line  of 
succession  of  the  emperors  of  the  East — those  sover- 
eigns whose  dignity  had  been  up  to  this  time  unap- 
proachable— there    had    been    no    real     break     since 

*  See  the  chapter  on  "  The  Empire  and  Policy  of  Charles"  in  Bryce's 
"Holy Roman  Empire."  In  the  discussion  (pp.  58-60)  of  the  question 
"Was  the  coronation  a  surprise?"  Mr.  Bryce  overlooks  the  fact  that  Charles 
had  reason  to  be  suspicious  of  the  Pope,  since  he  had  been  imposed  upon 
by  forged  documents  in  relation  to  the  donation  of  Pepin.  Sec  Dollinger's 
Fables  of  the  Popes.  Nor  does  he  seem  to  see  the  significance  of  Charle- 
magne's action  in  making  his  son  Louis  crown  himself  when  he  makes 
him  his  successor. 


i8o    C hr{ste7ido7n  Ecclesiastical  ajid  Political 

Constantine  until  now ;  and  now  there  was  a  break. 
Just  at  this  moment  the  sceptre  was  in  the  hands  of  a 
woman — that  Irene  whose  crimes  towards  her  son  have 
been  offset,  in  the  minds  of  eastern  monks  and  Romish 
historians,  by  her  devotion  to  image  worship.  To  a 
Frank,  an  Empress  was  no  sovereign,  and  there  was  no 
Emperor.  Charles  took  the  dignity,  because  it  was 
vacant  for  him,  and  he  had  the  right  to  it  ;  because  he 
was  master  of  the  City  from  which  the  title  and  author- 
ity originated.  It  is  probable  that  he  thought  to  unite 
the  East  and  the  West,  and  so  to  restore  the  imperial 
authority  over  the  whole  of  Christendom  ;  for  he 
negotiated  or  pretended  to  negotiate  a  marriage  with 
Irene  ;  but  that  was  not  to  be,  and  in  a  short  time  Irene 
was  dethroned,  and  Nicephorus  was  reigning  at  Con- 
stantinople. As  regards  the  West  there  was  motive 
enough  in  the  situation.  Charlemagne  ruled  over 
many  peoples,  each  with  its  own  customs,  and  he  need- 
ed an  authority  which  would  enable  him  to  reform  those 
customs  as  occasion  required.  The  imperial  authority 
was  well  defined  by  the  Roman  traditions  and  Roman 
law,  and  the  Emperor  was  not  subject  to  the  limitations 
of  the  King  of  the  Franks  ;  particularly  he  was  the 
unquestioned  superior  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  and 
through  him  of  all  the  ecclesiastical  hierarchy.  But 
there  was  a  still  further  reason.  By  introducing  into 
the  Frank  polity  an  office  and  a  title  which  were  not 
subject  to  the  Frank  traditions,  there  was  given,  so  it 
might  seem,  the  means  of  averting  the  disorders  which 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      1 8 1 

in  the  past  had  followed  the  partition  of  the  kingdom, 
according  to  the  Frank  law  of  inheritance,  among  the 
sons  of  a  deceased  king.  That  law  of  inheritance  had 
been  at  the  root  of  the  civil  wars  which  disgraced  their 
history  ;  and  it  was  necessary  that  there  should  be  an 
escape  from  it,  if  the  government  was  to  be  stable  and 
enduring.  The  right  of  primogeniture  was  not  yet 
thought  of;  it  was  a  later  invention  belonging  to 
FeudaHsm.  The  traditions  of  the  Empire  seemed  to 
offer  the  safeguard  needed,  and  the  possession  of  Italy 
and  Rome  authorized  the  assumption  of  the  imperial 
title. 

In  passing  over  to  the  Germans,  under  such  a  man 
as  Charlemagne,  the  Empire  necessarily  changed  its 
character.  The  German  institutions  easily  lent  them- 
selves to  it.  The  annual  assembly  became  a  court  and  a 
legislative  body  such  as  the  Eastern  Emperors  lacked  ; 
the  governors  who  ruled  their  dukedoms  and  lordships 
were  required  to  be  present  at  it  to  give  an  account  of 
their  governments  ;  they  came  to  do  homage  and 
render  obedience,  as  well  as  to  assist  in  making  the 
capitularies  ;  the  chief  ecclesiastics  were  there  to  report 
upon  the  state  of  the  Church,  and  to  advise  the  enact- 
ment of  canons  or  laws  for  its  regulation  ;  all  orders  in 
the  State  had  the  right  to  be  present  and  to  take  part, 
each  in  its  place  ;  the  Emperor  was  not  jealous  of  his 
subordinates  ;  high  as  they  might  be,  he  was  higher. 
The  imperial  title  therefore,  furnished,  or  seemed 
able  to  furnish  the  means  by  which  the  division  of  the 


1 82     C/irisiendoni  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


kingdom  into  kingdoms  might  consist  with  the  unity  of 
the  whole.  The  Emperor  made  his  three  sons  kings, 
but  he  was  their  superior  as  Emperor,  and  he  may  have 
thought  that  such  would  be  the  order  for  time  to  come. 
In  this  new  phase — and  the  idea  passed  into  the  Middle 
Ages — the  Emperor  was  "  king  of  kings  and  lord  of 
lords,"  and  being  so  he  looked  upon  himself  as  the 
"vicar  of  Christ,""  in  as  full  a  sense  as  the  Roman 
bishop  thought  himself  to  be  in  later  times.+ 

*  "The  Emperor  Joseph  II.,  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  'Advocate  of  the  Christian  Church,'  'Vicar  oi-'  Christ,'  '  Imperial 
Head  of  the  Faithful,'  'Leader  of  the  Christian  Army,'  'Protector  of 
Palestine, 'of  general  councils,  of  the  Catholic  faith." — Bryce,  Holy  Roman 
Empire,  p.  202.  The  Bishop  of  Rome,  in  the  time  of  Charlemagne  and 
for  ages  after,  arrogated  to  himself  no  higher  title  than  that  of  "Vicar 
of  St.  Peter." 

f  The  idea  was  worked  out  for  the  temporal  ruler  in  the  Spanish 
Church,  by  Isidore  of  Seville,  early  in  the  seventh  century.  In  the  acts 
of  the  Council  of  Aix,  held  by  Louis  the  Pious,  in  8x6,  there  is  a  long 
quotation  from  Isidore,  in  which  the  parallel  between  the  Christian 
ministry  and  that  of  the  Old  Testament  dispensation  is  drawn.  It  con- 
tains the  following  passage  and  more  of  the  same  sort  :  "  Sed  forsitan 
quaeritur  et  hoc:  cujus  figuram  faciebat  Moses?  Si  enim  filii  Aaron 
presbyterorum  figuram  faciebant,  et  Aaron  summi  sacerdolis,  id  est 
Episcopi ;  Moses  cujus?  Indubitanter  Christi,  et  vereper  omnia  Christi; 
quoniam  fuit  Similitudo  Mediatoris  Dei,  qui  est  inter  Deum  et  hominem 
Jesus  Christus,  qui  est  verus  Dux  populorum,  verus  Princeps  Sacer- 
dotum,  et  Dominus  Pontificum,  cui  est  honor  et  gloria  in  saecula  soscu- 
lorum.  Amen."  The  calling  our  Saviour,  Duke,  Prince  and  Lord, 
would  necessarily  imply  what  is  said  in  the  text.  The  following  is  from 
the  same  passage:  "In  novo  antem  testamento  post  Christum  sacer- 
dotalis  ordo  a  Petro  ccepii.  Ipsi  enim  primum  datus  est  Pontificatus 
in  Ecclesia  Christi.  *  *  *  Siquidem  et  cceteri  Apostoli  cum  Petro  par 
consortium  honoris  et  potestatis  acceperunt.  Qui  etiam  in  toto  orbe 
dispersi  Evangelium  prredicaverunt ;  quibusque  deccdentibus  succes- 
serunt  Episcopi,  qui  sunt  constituti  per  totum  mundum  in  sedibus  Apos- 
tolorum."  Concilia  Germanica,  Vol.  I.,  p.  439.  I  have  studied  only  those 
capitularies  of  Charlemagne  and  Louis  which  are  in  the  Concilia  Germanica. 


From  Coiistantine  to  the  Reformation.      183 

Now  this  explains  the  relation  of  Charlemagne  to 
the  Bishop  of  Rome.  It  has  been  much  disputed  what 
was  the  nature  of  his  donations  of  territory  to  the 
Roman  see — whether  they  were  absolute  or  merely  in 
usufruct — whether  the  Bishop  of  Rome  received  them 
as  sovereign,  or  merely  as  proprietor.  The  answer  is 
that  in  that  and  subsequent  ages  proprietorship  and 
government  were  identical  ;  proprietorship  implied 
government  and  government  implied  proprietorship ; 
but  that,  except  in  the  case  of  the  supreme  ruler  him- 
self, neither  the  lordship  nor  the  proprietorship  was 
absolute,  but  always  dependent  upon  the  sovereign. 
The  Bishop  of  Rome  held  of  the  Emperor  in  the  same  way 
as  the  possessors  of  fiefs  held  of  their  lords  under  the  feud- 
al system  when  that  was  in  operation  ;  he  was  both  ruler 
and  subject,  as  regards  his  temporal  dominions,  just  as 
all  other  lords  of  the  empire  were,  spiritual  and  tem- 
poral. The  weakness  as  well  as  the  strength  of  the 
empire  consisted  in  this  confusion  of  ownership  with 
government.  The  division  of  functions  which  Con- 
stantine  introduced  into  the  Roman  administration, 
and  which  modern  governments  find  it  to  their  advan- 
tage to  provide  for,  was  too  complex  a  notion  for  the 
times.  A  man  was  put  in  place  over  a  lordship,  and  was 
responsible  for  all  under  him — that  was  the  simple  idea. 
The  lord  was  owner  of  the  land,  as  well  as  governor  of 
the  people  ;  but  he  was  both  owner  and  governor  in 
subordination  to  the  Emperor  ;  and  therefore  on  the 
one  hand  when  he  was  deprived  of  his  government,  he 


1 84     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


was  deprived  also  of  his  estate  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  \yas  his  interest  when  made  duke  or  count,  to 
strengthen  himself  in  possession,  and  to  make  his 
dukedom  or  county  hereditary  in  his  family.  The 
weakness  was  that,  when  he  became  powerful  enough  to 
rebel,  the  central  authority  had  no  check  upon  him 
except  by  raising  up  against  him  his  compeers,  who 
might,  if  they  also  were  discontented,  make  common 
cause  with  him.  This  was  the  cause  of  the  disorders  in 
the  Empire  under  the  descendants  of  Charlemagne. 
But  while  the  great  Emperor  lived,  the  danger  was  not 
apparent.  He  was  strong  enough  to  compel  obedience 
and  to  count  on  loyalty,  and  therefore  he  neither  saw 
the  danger  nor  cared  to  make  the  nice  distinctions  by 
which  it  was  to  be  avoided.  In  the  same  way  the 
ecclesiastical  powers  became  lords  and  temporal 
governors  over  the  inhabitants  of  their  estates.  It  was 
the  general  rule,  with  this  advantage  in  favor  of 
the  Church,  that  no  questions  of  forfeiture  or  hereditary 
right  came  in  to  complicate  the  relation.  The  bishop 
or  abbot,  being  a  celibate,  could  have  no  legal  offspring 
to  take  his  lordship,  and  therefore  it  descended  without 
question  to  the  next  incumbent ;  in  all  other  respects 
he  was  not  only  an  ecclesiastical  dignitary,  but  a  tem- 
poral lord  as  well.  The  Bishop  of  Rome  under  Char- 
lemagne and  his  successors,  although  he  was  respected 
as  primate  of  the  whole  Church,  and  endowed  with 
larger  possessions  than  the  others,  was  in  precisely  the 
same  relation  to  the  Emperor  as  all  other  governors, 


From  Consfantine  fo  the  Reformation.      185 

lay  or  ecclesiastical.  He  was  both  lord  and  subject. 
He  was  lord  of  the  Roman  dominion,  but  subject  of  the 
Emperor — chief  bishop  of  the  Church,  but  subject  to 
the  imperial  confirmation  and  visitation.  In  one  respect, 
Charles  distinctly  set  aside  the  Roman  bishop's  claim 
to  jurisdiction.  In  publishing  the  ancient  canons  for 
the  information  of  the  Prankish  Church,  he  erased  the 
canons  of  Sardica,  and  made  himself  the  court  of  appeal 
of  last  resort. 

In  establishing  this  relation,  Charles  introduced  the 
new  imperialism  into  Western  Europe,  as  his  con- 
tribution to  the  solution  of  the  questions  involved  in  the 
union  of  Church  and  State.  It  cannot  be  said  that  he 
invented  any  new  thing ;  the  Pope  had  been  a  subject 
of  the  Eastern  Emperor,  he  now  became  a  subject  of 
the  Western  Emperor.  But  it  is  the  peculiar  character- 
istic of  Charlemagne's  influence  upon  his  times,  that 
without  originating  any  new  principles,  he  gave  a  new 
character  to  the  traditional  institutions  by  the  force  of 
his  own  personality.  It  was  assuredly  no  new  idea, 
that  the  monarch  was  to  be  head  of  both  Church  and 
State  ;  but  it  took  a  new  form  after  Charlemagne  ;  it 
worked  differently  in  the  West  from  what  it  did  in  the 
East  ;  and  the  reason  is  that  it  was  incorporated  into 
the  western  imperial  system,  in  connection  with  the 
institutions  of  the  German  race.  The  prelates  of  the 
Church  having  temporal  as  well  as  spiritual  rule,  be- 
came the  political  equals  of  the  military  aristocracy, 
and  were  able   in  some  degree  to  hold  them  in  check. 


1 86     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

The  sovereign  being  accustomed  to  take  counsel  with  his 
people  in  the  great  national  assembly,  met  there,  in  the 
ecclesiastics,  a  class  of  men  who  looked  at  matters 
from  a  different  point  of  view  from  the  mere  laymen, 
who  brought  Christian  principles  to  bear  upon  the 
discussion  of  affairs  of  State  ;  and  thus  there  was  a 
compensation  in  some  degree  for  the  secularizing  influ- 
ence of  the  situation  upon  the  clergy  themselves.  The 
Church  was  undoubtedly  strengthened  by  this  reform. 
It  held  together  through  all  the  troublous  times  of 
Charlemagne's  descendants.  It  made  great  mistakes 
and  suffered  for  them  ;  but  the  particular  disorders  of 
the  time  of  Charles  Martel  did  not  reappear.  The 
change  is  seen  in  the  great  statesmen-prelates  of  the 
subsequent  ages  such  as  Hincmar,  in  the  pomp  and 
splendor  which  attended  Divine  service  in  the  Mediaeval 
Church,  in  the  personal  grandeur  and  princely  surround- 
ings of  the  hierarchy  as  lords  spiritual  of  the  Christian 
Empire,  in  the  more  compact  organization  and  moral 
elevation  of  the  priesthood  through  the  enforcement  of 
the  rules  of  the  canonical  life,  and  in  the  attempt  to 
deal  with  the  laity  through  the  penitential  discipline, 
in  the  form  given  to  it  by  Theodore  of  Canterbury. 
The  rude  barons  who  tore  the  empire  to  pieces,  came 
in  contact  with  men  as  powerful  as  themselves,  who 
were  able  to  oppose  an  intellectual  supremacy  to  their 
brute  force,  to  awe  them  by  their  spiritual  authority,  to 
teach  them,  in  some  degree  at  least,  needed  lessons  of 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      187 

humanity,  and  in  some  cases  at  least,  to  bring  them  to 
a  true  repentance. 

And  if,  in  consequence  of  their  political  importance 
there  was  among  the  higher  clergy,  in  the  ages  succeed- 
ing, something  too  much  of  secular  feeling,  there  was  in 
another  direction  some  compensation  for  this.  The 
Mediaeval  Church  was  a  very  complex  and  highly  organ- 
ized body,  in  which  there  were  many  members,  none  of 
which  could  say  to  the  other,  "  I  have  no  need  of  you." 
In  our  modern  Church  in  which,  by  the  simple  ex- 
pedient of  shutting  out  from  religion  all  the  secular 
business  of  life,  we  have  brought  everything  down  to  a 
dead  level,  and  get  along  with  priests  whose  duty  it  is 
to  write  two  sermons  a  week,  and  bishops  whose 
business  is  to  travel  from  village  to  village  to  confirm, 
we  cannot  comprehend  the  grandeur  and  completeness 
of  the  idea  of  the  Christian  commonwealth  which  was 
both  Church  and  State,  as  it  must  have  presented  itself 
to  a  mind  like  that  of  Charlemagne,  who  felt  himself  in 
his  imperial  office  to  be  the  vicegerent  of  Christ  the 
King,  who  therefore  endeavored  to  make  all  his  in- 
stitutions Christian,  who  did  not  fear  to  call  his  clergy, 
as  well  as  his  laity,  to  the  work  of  government  and 
administration,  and  to  whom  the  work  of  every  man  in 
his  calling,  whether  ploughman,  soldier  or  priest,  was 
sacred  and  Christian.*  In  such  a  Church  and  State,  the 

*  "  In  a  great  assembly  held  at  Aachen,  A.D.  802,  the  lately  crowned 
Emperor  revised  the  laws  of  all  the  races  that  obeyed  him,  endeavoring 
to  harmonize  and  correct  them,  and  issued  a  capitulary  singular  in  sub- 


1 88    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


action  and  interaction  of  influences  flowed  in  channels 
with  which  we  are  not  familiar,  and  produced  results 
which  we  do  not  appreciate.  In  this  way  the  monastic 
institutions  were  the  corrective  of  the  secularizing 
tendency  to  which  their  political  responsibilities  ex- 
posed the  clergy.  They  were  the  home  of  a  real 
spiritual  life  which  diffused  itself  over  the  whole  Church. 
Mona^ticism  had  been  reformed  by  St.  Benedict  of 
Nursia,  a  long  time  before,  and  his  rule  made  it  a  life  of 
practical  benefit  to  the  monk  himself,  and  to  the  com- 
munity at  large.  The  obligation  to  work  as  well  as  to 
pray  was  of  incalculable  advantage  in  the  rude  ages  we 

ject  and  tone.  All  persons  within  his  dominions,  as  well  ecclesiastical 
as  civil,  who  have  already  sworn  allegiance  to  him  as  king,  are  thereby 
commanded  to  swear  to  him  afresh  as  Cxsar  ;  and  all  who  have  never  yet 
sworn,  down  to  the  age  of  twelve,  shall  now  take  the  same  oath.  'At  the 
same  time  it  shall  be  publicly  explained  to  all  what  is  the  force  and  mean- 
ing of  this  oath,  and  how  much  more  it  includes  than  a  mere  promise  of 
fidelity  to  the  monarch's  person.  Firstly,  it  binds  those  who  swear  it  to 
live,  each  and  every  one  of  them,  according  to  his  strength  and  know- 
ledge, in  the  holy  service  of  God  ;  since  the  Lord  Emperor  cannot  ex- 
tend over  all  his  care  and  discipline.  Secondly,  it  binds  them  neither  by 
force  nor  fraud  to  seize  or  molest  any  of  the  goods  or  servants  of  his 
crown.  Thirdly,  to  do  no  violence  nor  treason  towards  the  holy  Church 
or  to  widows,  or  orphans  or  strangers,  seeing  that  the  Lord  Emperor  has 
been  appointed  after  the  Lord  and  His  Saints,  the  protector  and  defender 
of  all  such.'  Then  in  similar  fashion  purity  of  life  is  prescribed  to  the 
monks ;  homicide,  the  neglect  of  hospitality  and  other  offences  are 
denounced,  the  notions  of  sin  and  crime  being  intermingled  and  almost 
identified  in  a  way  to  which  no  parallel  can  be  found,  unless  it  be  in  the 
Mosaic  Code.  There  God,  the  invisible  object  of  worship,  is  also,  though 
almost  incidentally,  the  judge  and  political  ruler  of  Israel  ;  here  the 
whole  cycle  of  social  and  moral  duty  is  deduced  from  the  obligation 
of  obedience  to  the  visible  autocratic  head  of  the  Christian  State.  "^ 
Bryce,  Holy  Roman  Empire,  pp.  65-6. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      189 

are  dealing  with.  It  made  agriculture  honorable,  and 
assisted  in  reclaiming  vast  tracts  of  land  from  the 
desert  into  which  they  had  relapsed.  The  monks 
planting  themselves  in  the  recesses  of  the  forests,  by  a 
flowing  brook,  began  clearing  the  land,  and  in  a  short 
time  "  the  wilderness  and  the  solitary  place  were  made 
glad  for  them,"  a  village  would  grow  up  around  the 
monastery,  and  a  new  centre  of  civilization  was  estab- 
lished. As  the  monastic  estates  became  valuable,  some 
laxity  and  disorder  crept  in  under  the  mayors  of  the 
palace  ;  but  Charlemagne  endeavored  to  correct  them, 
and  within  a  few  years  after  his  death  a  comprehensive 
reform  was  undertaken  by  Benedict  of  Aniane  under 
authority  from  Louis  the  Pious.  In  the  troublous 
times  that  followed,  the  monasteries  offered  a  retreat 
from  the  world  to  such  as  desired  to  forsake  it,  an 
opportunity  for  a  life  of  devotion  and  worship  to  those 
who  longed  for  it,  a  seclusion  for  repentance  to  the 
burdened  conscience,  an  example  to  the  outside  world 
of  self-denial  for  Christ's  sake,  and  last,  but  not  least,  a 
quiet  corner  for  study  and  meditation  for  those  who 
desired  to  advance  in  the  learning  that  the  age 
possessed.  It  was  found  that  the  obligation  to  work 
was  met,  not  only  by  manual  labor,  but  by  the  culti- 
vation of  the  useful  and  fine  arts  (such  as  they  were), 
by  the  multiplication  of  books,  and  the  devotion  to 
study.  The  impulse  given  by  Charlemagne  to  education 
bore  its  most  abundant  fruit  in  the  monasteries.  He  re- 
quired that  each  parish  priest  should  teach  the  children 


1 90    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

of  his  parish,  and  that  each  Cathedral  should  sustain  a 
school  of  higher  learning  ;  but  it  was  naturally  in  the 
monasteries  that  study  would  be  taken  upas  a  life-work, 
and  followed  with  a  real  love  for  it  for  its  own  sake,  and 
doubtless  there  were  in  the  cloisters  of  Western  Europe, 
many  guileless  souls,  who  like  the  Venerable  Bede  were 
happy  with  their  books,  and  useful  to  their  age  as 
students  and  teachers  and  copyists  of  manuscripts,  al- 
most all  of  which  were  written  in  the  monastic  Scrip- 
toria. In  such  ways  as  these,  as  well  as  by  calling 
eminent  monks  to  the  high  places  of  the  Church,  an 
influence  spread  from  the  monasteries  over  the  whole 
Church,  keeping  up  the  spiritual  and  intellectual  life, 
not  only  of  the  monks,  but  also  of  the  priests  and  people. 
The  capitularies  of  Charlemagne  contained  many 
admonitions  to  the  monks  to  observe  the  "  regular  " 
and  to  the  clergy  to  observe  the  "  canonical "  life.  The 
term  "  canonical  life  "  may  apply  to  that  obedience  to 
the  canons  in  general  which  was  incumbent  upon  the 
clergy  ;  but  it  also  contemplated  the  extension  to  the 
clergy  of  a  semi-monastic  rule  instituted  about  760  by 
Chrodegang,  Bishop  of  Metz.  This  rule  was  made  for 
the  clergy  of  Cathedral  and  collegiate  chapters, 
and  was  the  origin  of  the  mediaeval  development  of 
those  bodies.  Where  a  church  had  numerous  clergy, 
they  were  assembled  in  a  common  home  with  cloisters 
like  a  monastery,  and  subjected  to  a  rule  which  differed 
from  the  monastic  rule  by  certain  more  free  regulations 
suitable  to  the  calling  and  duties  of  the  clergy — among 


Profyi  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     191 

others  in  allowing  absence  from  the  cloister  for  the  per- 
formance of  Divine  service  in  the  country  churches,  in 
the  permission  to  retain  private  property,  and  in  making 
certain  distinctions  in  the  distribution  of  the  stipends. 
The  clergy  of  Cathedrals  came  to  be  called  canons  by 
reason  of  their  obligation  to  this  rule,  which  was 
speedily  adopted  by  other  bishops,  and  was  made  gen- 
eral by  Louis  the  Pious  in  his  capitulary  of  Aix.  The 
advantages  of  the  brotherhood  idea  for  a  body  of  men 
who  were  pledged  to  celibacy  were  manifest,  and  the 
improvement  in  their  moral  and  religious  condition 
resulting  from  it  raised  their  credit  with  the  people,  and 
contributed  to  increase  the  influence  they  exercised 
and  the  respect  in  which  they  were  held.  Whether 
Charlemagne's  substitution  of  the  Roman  Liturgy  for 
the  Galilean  was  an  improvement  or  not  may  be  ques- 
tioned ;  it  is  at  least  matter  for  regret  that  because  of 
it  the  Galilean  Liturgy  has  perished.  Perhaps  it  had 
become  too  complicated  and  the  copies  of  it  were  in  a 
bad  state,  and  it  probably  appeared  to  the  Emperor  that 
one  Liturgy  for  all  his  dominions  was  the  best.  At  any 
rate,  by  the  means  mentioned,  and  by  attention  to  de- 
tails in  other  directions,  without  any  extensive  theo- 
retical innovations,  the  institutions  of  the  Church  were 
strengthened  immensely  under  Charlemagne  and  his 
influence  was  felt  throughout  the  whole  mediaeval 
period. 

And  now,  for  a  more  personal  interest  in  Charlemagne 
himself,  I  wish  to  read  you,   again  from  my  old  copy 


192    Christe7idom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

of  Fleury,  the  account  of  the  closing  scenes  of  his  life  : 
"  Louis  being  arrived  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  the  Em- 
peror his  father  convened  a  great  assembly  of  the  bishops, 
abbots,  dukes,  counts  and  all  the  French  [Franks],  He 
exhorted  them  to  be  faithful  to  his  son,  and  demanded 
whether  they  were  willing  that  he  should  give  him  the  title 
of  Emperor.  They  answered,  this  was  a  thought  inspired 
of  God.  On  the  Sunday  following,  Charles  in  his  royal 
robes,  with  the  crown  on  his  head,  walked  to  the  church, 
and  advancing  to  the  high  altar,  caused  another  crown 
to  be  placed  thereon.  And  after  he  and  his  son  had 
prayed  for  a  long  time,  he  spoke  to  him  in  presence 
of  the  whole  assembly  of  prelates  and  lords  ;  admonish- 
ing him  in  the  first  place  to  love  and  fear  God  and  to 
keep  all  His  commandments,  to  protect  the  churches, 
to  be  affectionate  and  kind  to  his  sisters  and  young 
brothers,  to  be  loving  to  his  nephews  and  all  his  rela- 
tions. '  Honor,'  added  he, '  the  bishops  as  your  fathers; 
love  the  people  as  your  children  ;  make  choice  of  faith- 
ful and  upright  officers,  such  as  fear  God,  and  do  not  dis- 
place them  without  cause  ;  and  show  yourself  always 
blameless  before  God  and  man.'  Charles  gave  his  son 
much  more  advice,  and  asked  him  if  he  was  resolved  to 
obey  his  counsel.  Louis  replied  that  with  the  help  of 
God  he  would  obey  it  with  all  his  heart.  Then  Charles 
bid  him  take  the  crown  from  off  the  altar  with  his  own 
hands,  and  place  it  on  his  head,  giving  him  to  under- 
stand thereby,  that  he  had  his  empire  only  from  God. 
Louis    put    the   crown    on    his   head,  and  the    people 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     193 

shouted,  crying  'Long  live  the  Emperor  Louis!'  and  sol- 
emnized the  day  with  great  rejoicings.  Charles  returned 
thanks  to  God, saying  with  David,  'Blessed  be  Thou,  O 
Lord,  who  hast  set  my  son  on  my  throne  this  day,  mine 
eyes  even  seeing  it.'  "^  ^  *  The  Emperor  Charles  con- 
tinued at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  spending  his  time  in  devotion, 
almsgiving,  and  amendment  of  the  sacred  writings.  For 
he  employed  the  latter  part  of  his  life  in  correcting  the 
texts  of  the  four  Gospels,  taking  great  pains  therein, 
with  the  assistance  of  Greeks  and  Syrians.  He  showed 
all  his  life  long  a  fervent  zeal  for  religion  and  a  sincere 
piety;  he  never  failed,  when  his  health  would  permit,  to 
frequent  the  church  morning  and  evening,  and  to  assist 
at  the  Nocturns  and  the  Mass;  at  which  he  took  care 
that  the  whole  service  should  be  performed  with  all 
possible  decency,  and  often  gave  directions  to  the  over- 
seers of  the  church  not  to  suffer  any  disorder  in  this 
respect.  *  ^  *  In  January  814  [he]  was  taken  with  a 
fever  at  his  coming  out  of  the  bath.  He  thought  to  be 
cured  by  his  usual  measure  of  abstinence,  taking  no 
nourishment  but  a  little  water ;  but  being  seized  with 
a  pleurisy  at  the  same  time,  on  the  seventh  day  of  his 
sickness  he  sent  for  the  Archbishop  Hildebald,  his 
chief  chaplain,  who  in  company  with  other  bishops, 
gave  him  the  extreme  unction,  and  the  viaticum,  that 
is,  the  Body  and  Blood  of  our  Lord  ;  and  two  days  after, 
finding  himself  ready  to  expire,  he  made  the  sign  of  the 
cross  upon  his  forehead,  his  breast,  and  all  over  his 
body;  and  died  repeating,  '  Into  Thy  hands  O  Lord,  I 


194    CJiristendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

commend  my  spirit.'  He  was  buried  the  same  day, 
which  was  the  28th  of  January,  814,  being  seventy-two 
years  of  age,  whereof  he  had  reigned  forty-five  as  King 
of  France  [i.  e.  of  the  Franks],  and  thirteen  as  Em- 
peror." * 

Louis  the  Pious  was  made  co-emperor,  as  we  have 
seen,  in  813.  On  the  death  of  his  father  he  came  into 
full  possession  of  the  supreme  dignity.  The  histories 
usually  read,  represent  him  as  a  weak  prince,  because 
of  whose  imbecility  the  Empire  went  to  pieces.  They 
unite  also  in  representing  his  successors  as  more  imbe- 
cile than  himself,  and  attribute  the  calamities  of  the  age 
that  followed  to  their  incapacity.  One  great  historian, 
however,  Sir  Francis  Palgrave,  dissents  from  this  ver- 
dict ;  he  affirms  that  the  race  of  Charlemagne  to  the 
last  displayed  an  ability  equal  or  superior  to  that  of  the 
average  public  men  of  their  time,  and  finds  in  moral 
causes  the  explanation  of  that  catastrophe.  Others,  as 
Sir  James  Stephen  in  his  lectures  on  the  history  of 
France,  return  the  brief  and  compendious  answer,  "  Bar- 
barism" to  the  question.  Why  did  not  the  Empire  of 
Charlemagne  endure  .-'  This  answer  is  a  true  one  as 
far  as  it  goes  ;  but  it  is  not  a  complete  answer.  Many 
causes  co-operated,  some  retrogressive,  others  progress- 
ive, and  the  study  of  them  merits  more  attention  than 
is  usually  given  to  it.  The  defects  of  the  system  of 
government  were  grave,  the  relation  of  the  Church  to 

♦  Fleury,  B.  46.  Ch.  7,  8. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     195 

the  State  was  unsatisfactory  to  some  influential  parties, 
the  successors  of  Charlemagne,  though  not  imbecile, 
were  unequal  to  their  task,  the  nobles  were  selfish  and 
turbulent,  the  people  were  politically  weak,  the  age 
was  one  of  transition,  and  the  divergent  tendencies  of 
the  Romance  and  German  elements  compelled  a  divi- 
sion into  the  nations  of  modern  Europe.  But  one  of  the 
chief  causes  of  the  disruption  of  the  Empire  was  the 
attempt  of  the  clergy  to  acquire  a  preponderance  in 
the  direction  of  civil  affairs,  and  so  to  go  beyond  their 
province — an  attempt  which  reacted  with  terrible  effect 
upon  the  Church  itself,  and  for  which  it  suffered  in  the 
order  of  Providence  a  severe  punishment. 

The  Empire  would  work  smoothly  as  long  as  it  had 
for  its  head  a  man  of  the  genius  and  power  of  Charle- 
magne ;  but  no  provision  had  been  made  for  the  con- 
tingency of  a  weaker  ruler.  I  have  pointed  out  how  the 
administrative  system  of  Constantine  sustained  the 
government  of  the  East  under  a  feeble  Emperor  by  the 
division  of  responsibility  among  subordinates.  No  such 
expedient  was  known  to  the  Franks  or  thought  of  by 
Charlemagne.  As  long  as  he  was  at  the  head  it  was 
unnecessary ;  but  as  soon  as  he  was  taken  away,  the 
defect  became  apparent.  A  strong  central  authority 
was  necessary  to  keep  the  turbulent  element  in  order, 
and  that  central  authority  must  be  either  a  man  of  sur- 
passing greatness  or  a  corporation  of  officials  interested 
in  the  integrity  of  the  government,  when  the  nominal 
head  of  it  is  weak.     The  days  of  mayors  of  the  palace 


1 96    Christeyidom  Ecclesiastical  a?id  Political 

were  past,  the  feudal  age  had  not  begun,  the  adminis- 
trative system  of  the  East  was  incompatible  with  the 
time  and  place,  and  the  expectation  that  each  person 
would  be  good  enough  to  do  his  duty  in  that  state  to 
which  God  had  called  him,  was  a  poor  foundation  on 
which  to  construct  the  fabric  of  an  earthly  government. 
Under  these  circumstances  it  was  the  duty  of  the 
Church,  having  acquired  during  the  previous  age  a 
political  status,  to  strengthen  the  imperial  authority  by 
a  conscientious  and  enlightened  loyalty;  and  it  was 
because  it  failed  in  this,  that  it  fell  into  the  disorder  of 
the  tenth  century. 

Louis  had  been  made  King  of  Aquitaine  by  his  father 
when  he  was  but  five  years  old,  and  had  been  sent  into 
that  region  to  grow  up  among  his  people  under  the 
tutorship  of  William  Curt-nez,*  Count  of  Toulouse,  or 
Duke  of  Septimania,  a  devout  man  who,  after  distin- 
guishing himself  both  in  war  and  in  the  government  of 
his  country,  became  a  monk,  and  was  reverenced  as  a 
saint  after  his  death.  Louis  grew  up  a  man  of  singular- 
ly pure  personal  character,  with  some  firmness  and 
much  kindness  of  heart,  an  accomplished  gentleman,  a 
brave  soldier,  a  conscientious — perhaps  we  might  say  a 
morbidly  conscientious  ruler,  and  an  earnestly  and  sin- 
cerely religious  and  devout  Christian.  His  devotion 
was  more  severely  ecclesiastical  than  his  father's ;  he 
had  from  time  to  time   the  desire  to  become  a  monk  ; 


*  Sismondi,  257. 


Fro7n  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      197 

his  manners  and  tastes  as  well  as  his  religious  ideas  were 
more  Aquitanian  than  German  ;  and  it  seems  to  me 
that  his  chief  troubles  arose  from  his  real  or  supposed 
partiality  at  first  for  the  Romance  rather  than  the  Ger- 
man element  in  his  dominions.  This  would  raise  hopes 
on  the  part  of  the  Romance  or  French  element,  which 
was  represented  by  the  high  ecclesiastics,  of  a  prepon- 
derance in  the  Empire,  and  correspondingly  displease 
the  Germans.  It  was  probably  the  fear  of  this,  which 
made  Adelhard,  Bernard  and  Wala,  three  brothers  of 
great  ability,  who  stood  high  in  the  counsels  of  Charle- 
magne, recommend  him  to  make  Bernard  King  of 
Italy,  his  grandson,  Emperor  instead  of  Louis.  Bernard 
was  the  son  of  Charlemagne's  eldest  son  Pepin,  who 
died  before  his  father,  and  had  the  laws  of  succession 
which  hold  at  the  present  day  prevailed  then,  he  would 
have  been  the  heir.  For  this  offence  or  something 
similar,  when  Louis  came  to  the  throne,  he  banished 
the  three  brothers  from  the  court,  together  with  many 
others  who  had  been  about  his  father,  and  took  for  his 
chief  adviser  an  Aquitanian  Goth,  a  monk  who  under 
the  name  of  Benedict  of  Aniane  became  famous  for  his 
own  austerities,  and  for  his  extensive  reform  of  monas- 
ticism  as  the  minister  of  Louis.  Wala  and  his  brothers 
thereupon  became  the  bitter  enemies  of  Louis,  and  con- 
tributed materially  to  the  disorders  of  his  reign.  They 
stirred  up  King  Bernard  of  Italy  to  rebel  against  him ;  but 
Louis  soon  put  down  the  insurrection,  and  Bernard 
lost  his  life  through  the  severity  with  which  the  sen- 


1 98    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

tence  that  condemned  him  to  the  loss  of  his  eyes  was 
executed. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  on  the  death  of  Benedict, 
Louis  found  out  that  he  had  made  a  political  mistake,* 
and  drew  towards  the  Germans,  pardoning  the  partisans 
of  Bernard  and  giving  them  his  confidence  (he  sent 
Wala  to  Italy  as  counsellor  to  his  son  Lothair,  whom 
he  appointed  to  succeed  Bernard),  the  French  hierarchy 
were  perhaps  disappointed.  They  had  had  much 
influence  in  the  ecclesiastical  legislation  of  816  and  817, 
by  which  Louis  carried  through  a  great  scheme  for  the 
permanent  settlement,  as  he  thought,  of  the  Church  and 
the  Empire.  The  capitularies  of  those  years  dealt 
principally  with  ecclesiastical  affairs ;  they  aimed  to 
bring  all  the  clergy  under  the  canonical  rule  of  Chro- 
degang  of  Metz ;  they  republished  the  Benedictine 
rule  for  monks,  with  the  additions  of  Benedict  of  Ani- 
ane ;  they  made  a  rule  for  canonesses,  who  wished  to 
serve  God  in  celibate  communities  without  becoming 
nuns ;  they  regulated  the  support  of  the  parochial 
clergy  and  their  relation  to  the  bishops,  improving 
their  condition  ;  and  they  made  many  other  pro- 
visions for  the  good  order  of  the  Church.  The  bish- 
ops and  abbots  who  were  summoned  to  the  diet 
doubtless  assisted  in  shaping  this  legislation  ;  they 
were  consulted  also  in  the  arrangement  made  to  secure 

*  It  was  a  political  mistake,  and  Louis'  sensitive  conscience  made  it 
into  a  sin  for  which  he  did  public  penance  at  the  diet  of  Attigny  (822), 
which  was  a  still  greater  mistake. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      1 99 

the  succession  by  which  Lothair,  King  of  Italy,  became 
co-emperor,  and  Pepin  and  Louis,  the  other  sons, 
became  kings  respectively  of  Aquitaine  and  Bavaria 
on  the  Spanish  and  eastern  frontiers  ;  and  they  doubt- 
less expected,  as  I  said,  to  have  the  chief  influence  in 
directing  the  policy  of  the  Empire.  They  had  also 
taken  the  measure  of  Louis  at  the  time  of  the  penance 
of  Attigny,  and  when  he  adopted  a  more  German  policy 
their  disappointment  made  them  disloyal,  and  they 
were  ready  to  assist  in  humbling  him  when  occasion 
served. 

The  Bishop  of  Rome,  too,  had  his  policy,  if  not  his 
grievance.  Louis  had  a  high  sense  of  the  imperial 
prerogative  ;  he  was  firm  in  asserting  his  authority  over 
the  people  and  Church  of  Rome  ;  and  the  Pope  was 
interested  in  weakening  it  so  as  to  emancipate  him- 
self from  it.  It  is  to  be  remarked  that  the  Pope  was  not 
consulted  in  the  extensive  reforms  of  816  and  817  ;  they 
were  the  act  of  the  Frank  Empire  and  Church,  and 
were  put  forth  as  such,  depending  therefore  upon  the 
Emperor  and  not  upon  the  Pope  for  their  validity.  The 
Pope  was  a  subject  of  the  empire,  the  chief  ecclesiastic 
but  nothing  more.  That  subject-condition  was  galling. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  when  the  Popes  first  appealed 
to  the  Franks  for  aid  against  the  Lombards,  they  had 
no  thought  that  the  Franks  would  conquer  Italy  and 
incorporate  it  with  their  dominions.  They  wanted 
them  for  protectors  because  they  were  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Lombards,  and  too  distant  to  oppress  them 


2CX)    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

as  the  Lombards  threatened  to  do.  They  looked  upon 
them  too,  as  barbarians,  and  hoped  to  make  the  family 
of  Pepin  feel  that  they  owed  the  crown  to  the  Bishop  of 
Rome.  The  Empire  of  Charlemagne,  therefore,  was  a 
great  disappointment  to  them.  They  could  not  trifle 
with  the  great  Emperor  himself;  but  when  his  sceptre 
passed  to  feebler  hands  tlicy  could  throw  off  the  yoke 
and  perhaps  reduce  the  Emperor  himself  to  subjection. 
At  least,  if  the  Empire  was  to  be,  they  might  take  the 
credit  of  it  to  themselves  and  bide  their  time.  Leo  III., 
anticipating  the  designs  of  Charles,  crowned  him  by 
surprise.  Charlemagne  understood  ;  and  when  Louis 
was  declared  Emperor,  he  made  him  take  the  crown 
himself  from  the  altar,  and  put  it  upon  his  own  head. 
But  Stephen  IV.  managed  to  get  the  opportunity  to 
repeat  the  coronation.  Then  in  823,  Lothair,  making 
a  visit  to  Rome  to  keep  Easter,  was  crowned  by  Pas- 
chal I.  And  so  the  tradition  was  established  that  the 
Emperor  must  be  crowned  by  the  Pope.  Concurrent 
with  this  design  there  was  another  ;  the  authority  of 
the  Emperor  over  the  papal  possessions  and  the  Church 
of  Rome  must  be  shaken  off.  The  enemies  of  Leo  III. 
had  been  so  violent  that  he  had  been  obliged  to  have 
recourse  to  Charles,  and  Charles  acted  as  judge  in 
investigating  the  truth  of  the  charges  and  counter- 
charges. That  act  fixed  the  imperial  authority  in 
Rome.  The  coronation  followed,  and  Leo  was  secure 
as  long  as  Charlemagne  lived.  At  his  death  the  enmity 
broke   out  again  ;    Leo  arrested  and  inflicted   capital 


Front  Cojistantine  to  the  Reformation.     201 

punishment  upon  the  chiefs  of  the  party  opposed  to  him. 
Intelligence  was  sent  to  Louis  ;  he  was  highly  offended 
at  Leo's  action  as  in  derogation  of  his  sovereignty,  and 
commanded  King  Bernard  to  go  to  Rome  and  do  justice 
as  his  deputy.  Then  Leo  died,  and  Stephen  IV.  was 
consecrated  in  haste,  but  sent  an  excuse  to  the  Emper- 
or for  not  waiting  for  the  presence  of  his  legates  because 
of  the  disturbed  state  of  the  city ;  his  excuse  was 
accepted  as  he  had  made  the  Romans  swear  fealty  to 
the  Emperor.  In  less  than  a  year  he  died  and  Paschal 
I.  was  elected  and  consecrated  in  the  same  way  ;  he  too 
apologized,  but  this  time  the  Romans  received  an  ad- 
monition not  to  offend  again.  In  823,  as  I  said.  Paschal 
crowned  Lothair.  But  immediately  after  that,  certain 
officials  who  had  held  high  place  at  the  coronation  were 
put  to  death.  Imperial  commissioners  were  sent  to 
investigate  the  affair.  Paschal  took  oath  that  he  was 
clear  of  offence,  but  refused  to  surrender  the  murderers 
or  executioners  and  justified  the  act.  Then  Paschal 
died  and  there  was  a  contested  election.  Eugenius  was 
made  Pope  by  the  management  of  Wala,  but  the  city 
was  turbulent,  and  Lothair  himself  came  to  Rome.  He 
demanded  of  the  Pope  why  the  friends  of  the  Franks 
were  insulted  and  offered  violence.  He  made  a  consti- 
tution regulating  the  election  of  the  Pope,  and  con- 
firmed the  statute  which  had  been  in  force  under  the 
eastern  emperors,  that  no  Pope  should  be  consecrated 
until  his  election  had  been  ratified  by  the  imperial 
authority.     He  also  issued  other  decrees  providing  for 


202     Christe7ido))i  Jicclcsiastical  and  Political 


the  imperial  supremac\'in  the  civil  government  and  the 
administration  of  justice.  Then  Eugenius  died,  and 
Gregory  IV.  .was  made  Pope  with  the  sanction  of 
Lothair.  But  his  successor  Sergius  II.  was  consecrated 
without  waiting  for  the  imperial  commissioners  ;  and 
his  successor  Leo  IV.  found  in  the  exigencies  of  the 
times  reason  for  the  same  omission. 

This  carries  us  beyond  the  life  of  Louis  the  Pious, 
but  it  shows  the  policy  of  the  Roman  people  and  their 
bishops.  There  was  thus  in  three  directions,  a  disloyal 
and  discontented  spirit  in  the  Church — Wala  and  his 
party  in  Germany,  the  French  hierarchy,  and  the  Bish- 
op of  Rome.  And  so  it  was  that  the  Church  failed  in 
its  duty  at  this  particular  time.  Its  duty  was,  in  the 
interest  of  law  and  order,  to  uphold  the  central  author- 
ity, to  rectify  mistakes  by  constitutional  means,  and  to 
exert  its  influence  to  preserve  peace.  It  was  a  grand 
idea,  that  of  an  Emperor  over  the  confederated  com- 
monwealth of  nations,  preserving  peace  between  the 
states  by  his  authority,  while  each  nationality  was 
enabled  to  pursue  its  own  course  of  development  under 
its  own  king.  It  was  an  idea  that  did  not  seem  impos- 
sible of  realization.  Sustained  by  the  moral  and  spiritual 
power  of  the  Church,  the  Empire  might  seem  to  have 
in  it  the  elements  of  stability  and  endurance.  The 
secular  nobles  might  be  expected  to  be  turbulent  and 
unruly,  but  that  the  Church  should  labor  to  overthrow 
it  was  not  to  be  thought  beforehand.  And  that  it 
should  do    so  under  so  religious   a   king   as  Louis   is 


From  Constanti'ne  to  the  Reformation.     203 


almost  beyond  belief.  And  yet  it  was  the  very  re- 
ligiousness of  the  Emperor  that  betrayed  it  into  the 
attempt.  In  this  failure  of  duty  is  to  be  found  the 
cause  under  the  retributive  justice  of  Divine  Providence, 
of  the  affliction  of  the  Church  of  France  by  the  North- 
men in  the  ninth  century,  and  of  the  degradation  of  the 
see  of  Rome  in  the  tenth.  Had  there  been  a  strong 
government  and  a  united  Empire,  neither  of  these 
results  would  have  happened. 

The  turning  points  of  the  history  of  the  ninth  century 
are  :  the  treachery  of  the  Field  of  Lies  in  833,  the  battle 
of  Fontenailles  in  841,  and  the  Treaty  of  Verdun  in  843. 
By  the  first  a  mortal  wound  was  given  to  the  Empire 
of  Charlemagne ;  by  the  second  the  military  power  of 
the  Franks  was  destroyed  ;  and  by  the  third,  modern 
Europe  came  into  existence. 

For  sixteen  years  Louis  the  Pious  governed  on  the 
whole  well  and  prosperously.  The  rebellion  of  Bernard 
was  put  down  without  any  trouble,  the  power  of  the 
Empire  was  respected  without  its  borders,  and  its 
authority  within  them.  But  in  829,  Louis  made  the  son 
of  his  second  marriage  (Charles  was  then  six  years  old), 
Duke  of  Germany,  This  offended  his  half-brothers, 
Lothair,  Louis  and  Pepin,  who  looked  upon  what  was 
given  to  him  as  taken  from  them.  They  fomented  dis- 
content throughout  the  Empire,  for  which  there  were 
plausible  pretexts  in  some  inroads  of  the  barbarians  and 
Saracens,  which  had  not  been  successfully  resisted,  in 
some  bestowals  of  ecclesiastical  fiefs  upon  laymen,  and 


204   Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

in  the  public  distress  through  bad  harvests  and  pesti- 
lential diseases.  An  army  which  Louis  raised  for  an 
expedition  into  Brittany  refused  to  follow  him,  and  a 
time  of  confusion  ensued  in  which  Louis  was  for  a  while 
the  prisoner  of  his  sons,  and  in  which  he  deposed  his 
son  Pepin  and  gave  his  kingdom  to  Charles.  Then  the 
sons  of  Hermengarda  rebelled  in  earnest.  The  winter 
of  832  was  spent  in  organizing  a  wide-spread  conspiracy. 
The  bishops  of  France  entered  into  it,  and  so  did  the 
Bishop  of  Rome.  In  the  spring  the  insurgents  assembled 
at  the  Rothfeld,  nearColmar,  in  Alsace.  The  Emperor 
Louis  encamped  near  them ;  in  his  army  were  the 
Bishops  of  Austrasia  and  Germany.  The  Pope  was  with 
Lothair.  He  professed  that  he  had  come  to  make 
peace,  and  neither  side  was  in  haste  to  shed  blood. 
The  Pope  was  permitted  to  pass  to  and  fro  be- 
tween the  camps  ;  the  nature  of  his  negotiations  is  not 
understood  ;  but  the  result  of  them  was  that  on  the 
night  of  June  24th,  833,  the  battalions  of  Louis  passed 
over  to  the  camp  of  his  sons,  and  Louis  being  defence- 
less was  taken  prisoner.  The  armies  then  disbanded, 
leaving  him  in  the  custody  of  Lothair.  Posterity  has 
marked  its  sense  of  the  infamy  of  this  desertion  of 
Louis,  by  giving  to  the  place  where  it  was  effected,  the 
name  of  the  Field  of  Lies. 

It  is  the  part  which  the  bishops  took  in  this  affair 
and  its  sequel,  which  creates  the  most  surprise.  It  is 
evident  that  the  different  parties  to  this  conspiracy 
were    swayed     by     different     motives,    and     pursuing 


From  Constantme  to  the  Reformation.     205 

different  objects.  The  three  kings,  Lothair,  Pepin 
and  Louis,  were  actuated  by  pure  selfishness.  What 
Gregory's  motives  were  it  is  impossible  to  say ; 
the  account  says  that  he  returned  to  Rome  in 
much  grief.  The  German  ionspirators,  Wala  and  the 
rest,  were  disgusted  by  the  turn  of  affairs  after  the  sur- 
render of  Louis,  and  like  Gregory,  went  home  as 
quickly  as  possible.  But  the  French  bishops  had  an 
object  of  their  own.  They  were  bent  on  making  a 
demonstration  of  the  superiority  of  the  spiritual  to  the 
temporal  power.  They  were  not  papalists  ;  they  were 
not  desirous  to  aggrandize  the  Roman  see;  they  wished 
to  obtain  the  power  for  themselves.  It  seems  to  me 
that  one  cause  of  the  "grief"  of  Gregory,  and  the 
sudden  withdrawal  of  Wala,  was  this  independence  of 
the  French  bishops.*  They  had  no  such  idea  of  the 
Roman  authority  as  had  been  infused  into  the  Ger- 
man Church  by  Boniface  of  Mentz ;  they  had  the 
ancient  traditions  of  the  Gallican  Church  to  fall  back 
on  ;  and  they  had  the  idea  of  making  the  Neustrian  side 
of  the  Frank  kingdom  superior  to  the  Austrasian,  and 
the  Frankish  Church,  as  a  national  Church,  superior  to 
the  lay  element  in  the  national  councils.  All  this  comes 
out  in  the  later  history  of  Charles  the  Bald,  and  Hinc- 
mar  of  Rheims,  and  the  same  principles  were  at  work 
now.  The  French  bishops  therefore  seized  upon  this 
opportunity  to  make  a  demonstration — an  unwise  and  un- 

*  Some  of  them  told  the  Pope   that  if  he  came  to  excommunicate  he 
should  return  excommunicated. 


2o6    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

rightous  demonstration  of  their  spiritual  authority.taking- 
advantage  of  the  morbid  conscientiousness  of  the  broken 
Emperor.  They  put  Louis  the  Pious  to  public  penance 
for  his  crimes  against  the  State,  crimes  which  were 
made  out  by  attributing  to  him  the  disorders  of  which, 
his  sons  had  been  the  cause.  The  effect  of  that  penance 
was  intended  to  be,  according  to  old  canons,  a  per- 
manent disqualification  for  bearing  arms,  and  therefore 
a  deposition  from  the  Empire,  since  none  but  a  soldier 
could  be  Emperor.  But  the  effect  was  the  reverse  of 
what  was  intended.  Public  sympathy  was  aroused,  Pepin 
and  Louis  returned  to  their  allegiance,  Lothair  was 
compelled  to  set  his  father  at  liberty,  the  Austrasian 
bishops  reconciled  him  to  the  Church  and  restored  his 
arms,  the  Archbishops  of  Rheims,  Lyons  and  Vienne, 
the  chief  metropolitans  of  the  French  Church,  were 
deposed  for  their  part  in  this  unseemly  proceeding, 
and  Louis  was  again  Emperor  in  fact,  as  well  as  in 
name.  But  nothing  could  restore  the  strength  and  unity 
of  the  Empire.  Louis  lived  a  few  years  longer  in  strife 
with  his  children  ;  he  died  June  20th,  840.  On  the 
Field  of  Lies,  says  Palgrave,  the  faith  and  honor  of  the 
Frankish  nation  perished  forever. 

On  the  death  of  Louis,  disputes  broke  out  more  fiercely 
than  ever  between  his  sons.  To  punish  their  recurring 
rebellions,  Louis  had  in  successive  diets  made  no  less 
than  ten  different  partitions  of  the  Empire,  in  each  of 
which  he  augmented  the  portion  of  Charles  at  the  ex- 
pense   of  the  others.      The  last  partition  had  reduced 


Profii  Constaniine  to  the  Reformation.     207 

Louis  the  German  (as  he  is  known  in  history)  to 
Bavaria  alone,  and  divided  the  rest  between  Lothair 
and  Charles.  Louis  advanced  his  authority  as  far  as 
the  Rhine  ;  a  son  of  Pepin  disputed  Aquitaine  with 
Charles,  and  Lothair  claimed  imperial  authority  over 
all  his  brothers  according  to  the  original  settlement. 
In  some  way  an  understanding  was  arrived  at  between 
Louis  and  Charles,  and  they  combined  against  Lothair. 
In  June,  841,  the  armies  of  the  three  brothers  met,  and 
appealed  to  the  judgment  of  God  at  the  battle  of 
Fontenailles.  That  battle,  it  is  said,  was  the  most 
desperate  and  bloody  of  any  which  had  been  fought  by 
the  Franks,  since  Charles  Martel  defeated  the  Saracens. 
It  destroyed  their  military  power,  and  laid  the  Empire 
open  to  the  incursions  of  its  Saracen  and  barbarian 
enemies.  Lothair  was  beaten,  but  his  brothers  were  so 
badly  crippled  that  they  were  unable  to  follow  up  their 
victory.  All  the  same  the  battle  of  Fontenailles  was 
one  of  the  decisive  battles  of  the  world.  It  settled  the 
fate  of  the  Empire  of  Charlemagne,  and  handed 
Europe  over  to  a  century  of  lawlessness  and  misery, 
which  is  perhaps  the  darkest  in  its  history. 

The  immediate  result  was  the  Treaty  of  Verdun  two 
j-ears  later.  Lothair  retreated  to  Aachen  and  gathered 
a  new  army  of  Saxons,  Germans  and  Austrasians,  with 
which  he  intended  to  attack  Charles.  But  an  over- 
flow of  the  Seine  prevented,  and  Charles  made  another 
junction  with  Louis,  where  they  and  their  respective 
peoples  took  those  memorable  oaths,  which  give  us  the 


2o8    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

most  ancient  examples  of  the  vernacular  speech  both  of 
the  French  and  German,  But  there  was  no  more  dis- 
position to  fight  on  either  side  ;  the  partisans  of 
Lothair  began  to  desert  him,  and  the  people  demanded 
a  peaceful  settlement  of  the  contending  claims.  Lothair 
proposed  a  treaty  of  peace  in  which  the  first  article  was 
to  be  the  independence  of  the  kingdoms  of  Louis  and 
Charles.  Lothair  was  to  have  Italy,  Louis  Bavaria,  and 
Charles  Aquitaine.  The  rest  of  the  Empire  was  to  be 
divided  into  three  equal  portions,  of  which  Lothair  was 
to  have  the  first  choice.  Each  chose  forty  of  his  nobles 
as  commissioners  to  make  the  division  ;  but  when  they 
-came  together  they  found  that  they  were  unacquainted 
with  the  extent  and  relative  value  of  the  various  prov- 
inces, and  it  was  determined  to  make  a  survey  of  the 
whole  Empire.  The  number  of  commissioners  was 
increased  to  three  hundred,  and  by  August  of  the  fol- 
lowing year  the  report  was  made  to  the  three  kings. 
Upon  that  report  a  division  was  made  by  the  Treaty  of 
Verdun.  What  we  may  call  France  was  given  to 
Charles  the  Bald,  Germany  to  Louis,  and  Italy,  with  a 
strip  of  territory  between  the  Rhine  and  the  Meuse, 
extending  north  and  south  from  the  confines  of  the 
Empire  to  Italy,  to  Lothair.  The  modern  name  of 
Lorraine  is  a  memorial  of  this  division.  It  has  always 
been  a  debateable  land  between  France  and  Germany. 
"All  the  subsequent  history  of  Europe"  says  Sir 
Francis  Palgrave  "  is  an  exposition  of  the  Treaty  of 
Verdun." 


From  Constanime  to  the  Reformatio}!.     209 

But  it  was  to  be  a  long  time  before  France  and  Ger- 
many were  consolidated  into  the  powerful  nations  of 
the  Middle  Ages  and  of  modern  times.  The  immediate 
consequence  of  the  Treaty  of  Verdun  was  to  reduce  the 
imperial  name  to  a  mere  titular  designation  of  the 
sovereign  who  had  possession  of  Italy,  and  to  hand  over 
the  kingdoms  carved  out  of  the  Empire  to  a  period  of 
anarchy  and  confusion.  And  now  the  Church  was 
called  upon  by  the  righteous  retribution  of  Providence 
to  pay  the  penalty  of  its  attempt  to  control  the  civil 
government,  and  of  its  participation  in  the  events 
which  destroyed  the  Empire.  We  are  never  to  forget 
that  there  are  three  Divine  institutions,  to  each  of 
which  is  committed  its  definite  authority  over  the  indi- 
vidual, and  to  each  of  which  is  given  its  distinct  sphere 
of  influence  in  the  government  and  training  of  man- 
kind— the  family,  the  nation  and  the  Church.  Destroy 
or  cripple  either  of  these  institutions,  the  effect  is  dis- 
astrous to  society.  Let  either  of  them  interfere,  as  such, 
within  the  sphere  of  the  others,  the  result  is  confusion 
and  weakness.  At  the  present  day  the  tendency  is  to 
ignore  the  Divine  authority  of  the  Church,  even  within 
its  own  spiritual  sphere,  and  the  consequence  is  an 
increasing  laxity  in  the  family  relation,  and  a  dimin- 
ishing respect  for  law  and  authority  in  the  State.  I 
hold  that  in  the  ninth  century  it  was  a  more  pardon- 
able mistake  to  suppose  that  the  Church  might  rightly 
and  beneficially  undertake  to  direct  the  public  as  well 
as  the  private  conduct  of  princes  and  the  policy  of  the 


2  lo    Christendoui  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

State.  But  still  a  mistake  it  was.  When  the  ecclesias- 
tical authorities  felt  themselves  called  upon,  not  merely 
to  take  part  in  the  common  deliberations  for  the  welfare 
of  the  State  in  which  they  were  equally  citizens  with 
their  laymen,  but  to  decide  ex  cathedra  upon  the  policy 
to  be  pursued,  one  of  two  results  must  follow:  either 
the  public  policy  would  be  directed  from  an  ecclesias- 
tical and  monastic  standpoint,  and  those  interests  be 
neglected  which  it  requires  the  lay  mind  to  appreciate 
and  the  military  arm  to  uphold  ;  or  else  the  ecclesias- 
tic, to  be  a  capable  and  efficient  governor  and  states- 
man must  become  assimilated  to  the  layman  in  habits 
of  mind  and  action,  more  than  is  seemly  in  view  of  his 
professed  devotion  to  the  sacred  ministry.  Out  of  the 
union  of  Church  and  State  at  this  period,  both  of  these 
results  emerged.  In  Germany  the  prelates  became 
great  lay-lords  so  to  speak  ;  although  they  were  in  holy 
orders  their  habits  and  modes  of  thought  and  life  were 
very  much  those  of  the  lay  nobles  to  whose  families 
they  belonged  ;  and  I  must  confess  that  while  I  see  the 
manifold  evils  of  the  system  that  required  it,  and  which 
I  am  endeavoring  to  explain,  I  do  not  join  in  the  indis- 
criminate condemnation  of  these  apparently  worldly 
statesmen  and  soldier-bishops  of  the  dark  ages.  They 
had  at  least  a  better  appreciation  of  the  requirements 
of  the  times  than  the  more  ecclesiastical  French  prel- 
ates who  humiliated  Louis  the  Pious  and  ruled  Charles 
the  Bald.  These  French  prelates,  though  they  make  a 
much    better     appearance     in     ecclesiastical    history, 


Frort  Constantine  to  the  Reforinatioji.      211 

brought  the  kingdom  of  France  to  the  lowest  depths 
of  anarchy  and  weakness.  There  is  no  grander  figure 
in  the  Church  history  of  this  period  than  Hincmar  the 
great  Archbishop  of  Rheims  ;  he  was  the  equal  of  Pope 
Nicholas  I.,  and  the  superior  of  Adrian  II.;  he  success- 
fully asserted  the  liberties  of  the  Gallican  Church 
against  papal  aggression  ;  he  directed  the  policy  of 
Charles  the  Bald,  and  secured  the  throne  upon  his 
death  to  Louis  the  Stammerer,  his  son  ;  and  yet  in  his 
last  year  (882)  he  was  driven  out  of  his  see  in  the 
interior  of  France  by  the  Northmen,  and  died  at  a 
distance  from  it.  The  great  preponderance  of  the 
ecclesiastical  over  the  lay  or  military  aristocracy  in 
France  at  this  time,  and  the  direction  of  affairs  from 
the  standpoint  of  ecclesiastical  politics  were  the 
causes  of  the  defencelessness  of  France  against  the 
Northmen  ;  and  the  tremendous  desolation  of  the 
country  for  the  half-century  succeeding  the  "Field  of 
Lies  "  was  the  temporal  punishment  of  their  disloyalty 
on  that  occasion. 

The  ravages  of  the  Northmen  on  the  sea-coast  and 
along  the  great  rivers  which  gave  them  access  by  boats 
into  the  interior,  although  they  were  felt  severely  in 
Germany,  and  form  a  large  part  of  the  history  of  Eng- 
land for  this  period,  spent  their  most  destructive  fury 
upon  France.  It  seems  almost  incredible  that  Charles 
the  Bald  and  his  ecclesiastical  counsellors,  while  they 
were  active  in  endeavoring  to  extend  his  power  at  the 
expense  of  his  brothers  and  nephews  in   Germany  and 


212     Christendo7)t  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Italy,  should  have  made  no  attempts  to  protect  the 
kingdom  they  already  possessed  from  these  devastating 
inroads.  Yet  so  it  was.  The  vision  of  an  ecclesiastical 
empire  infatuated  them  ;  they  aimed  to  reconstruct 
Charlemagne's  scheme  with  the  Church  predominant, 
and  they  were  more  intent  upon  this  than  upon  the 
national  defence.  They  even  prohibited  the  building  of 
castles  as  a  protection  against  the  Northmen,  and  razed 
to  the  ground  some  that  had  been  begun  by  the  barons 
themselves  on  their  own  lands,  fearing  more  the  revival 
of  a  military  spirit  than  careful  of  the  true  interests  of 
France.  And  so  for  three-quarters  of  a  century  France 
was  exposed,  virtually  defenceless,  to  the  attacks  of 
these  barbarian  and  pagan  hordes,  whose  rage  was 
especially  directed  against  the  churches  and  mon- 
asteries, and  whose  appetite  for  plunder  was  whetted 
rather  than  satiated  by  the  treasures  of  which  they 
despoiled  them.  These  piratical  incursions  began  to 
be  of  importance  at  the  very  time  of  the  Field  of  Lies. 
Just  after  that  dishonorable  transaction,  the  Northmen 
appear  burning  churches  and  monasteries  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Scheldt,  and  threatening  the  cities  of  the  Rhine. 
In  841,  a  month  before  the  battle  of  Fontenailles,  they 
entered  the  Seine,  plundered  and  burned  Rouen,  and 
destroyed  towns  and  monasteries  as  they  made  their 
way  back  to  the  sea.  In  843,  the  year  of  the  Treaty  of 
Verdun,  they  passed  up  the  Loire  and  sacked  the  city 
of  Nantes  ;  they  massacred  the  bishop  and  priests  with 
the   people  who  had  taken    refuge   in  the  Cathedral. 


From  Constantme  to  the  Reformation.     2 1 3 

Two  years  after  that  they  plundered  Paris,  where  they 
hanged  a  hundred  and  eleven  persons  in  front  of  the 
royal  camp,  Charles  lying  there  afraid  to  attack  them. 
After  they  had  plundered  the  city,  Charles  paid  them 
seven  thousand  pounds  of  silver  to  go  away,  and  so 
ensured  their  speedy  return. 

These  devastations  continued  through  the  rest  of  the 
century.  The  mere  enumeration  of  the  places  plunder- 
ed by  the  Northmen,  as  given  by  Robertson,  conveys 
the  most  vivid  idea  of  the  misery  of  the  times  :  "They 
repeatedly  plundered  the  more  exposed  cities;  such  as 
Hamburg,  Dorstadt  and  Bordeaux  ;  they  ascended  the 
Rhine  to  Mentz,  and  even  to  Worms  ;  the  Moselle  to 
Treves  ;  the  Somme  to  Amiens  ;  the  Seine  to  Rouen 
and  to  Paris,  once  the  Merovingian  capital,  and  still 
the  chief  city  of  Neustria,  rich  in  churches  and  in 
treasures,  and  having  the  royal  monastery  of  St.  Denys 
in  its  immediate  neighborhood.  From  Paris  they  made 
their  way  up  the  Marne  to  Meaux  and  Chalons,  up  the 
Yonne  to  Sens  and  Auxerre.  The  Loire  gave  them  a 
passage  to  Tours,  the  city  of  St.  Martin,  and  to 
Orleans ;  the  Vienne  to  Limoges  ;  the  Charente  to 
Saintes  and  Angouleme  ;  the  Garonne  to  Toulouse. 
*  *  *  After  a  time,  growing  bolder  through  im- 
punity, they  would  leave  their  vessels  on  the  great 
rivers  and  strike  across  the  unresisting  country  to  pil- 
lage inland  places  of  noted  wealth,  such  as  Ghent, 
Beauvais,  Chartres,  Bourges,  Rheims,  Laon,  and  Charle- 


214    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

magne's  own  city  of  Aix,  where  they  stabled  their  horses 
in  the  imperial  palace."* 

"  Thu.s,"  says  Michelet,  "  was  proved  the  inability  of 
the  episcopal  power  to  defend  and  govern  France." 
I  believe  that  these  tremendous  devastations  were,  as  I 
have  said,  Divine  judgments  upon  the  Church  of  France 
for  its  share  in  breaking  up  the  Empire.  In  those  bar- 
barous times,  the  possessors  of  such  civilization  as  re- 
mained (and  they  were  the  clergy  and  the  monks)  ought 
to  have  known  that  to  keep  the  Empire  intact  was  the 
only  way  to  secure  peace  upon  its  borders,  surrounded 
as  it  was  with  active  enemies  and  untamed  barbarians. 
To  be  at  peace  it  must  be  strong  enough  to  compel 
peace.  The  political  vice  of  the  Frank  system  was  the 
division  of  the  sovereignty  among  all  the  surviving  sons 
of  a  deceased  monarch  ;  the  remedy  was  as  Charle- 
magne and  Louis  the  Pious  foresaw  and  provided,  the 
imperial  prerogative,  keeping  the  supreme  rule  in  a 
single  hand,  and  governing  as  subordinates  the  kings 
who  inherited  by  Frank  custom  their  separate  portions 
of  the  common  territory.  Without  this,  western 
Christendom  must  suffer  disintegration,  and  its  diminish- 
ing fragments  would  be  weak  to  resist  invasion  from 
without  or  anarchy  within.  The  supreme  duty  of  the 
clergy,  as  a  political  power,  was  to  sustain  the  Empire 
by  unswerving  loyalty  to  the  central  authority  ;  and 
because  they  failed  in  that  duty,  their  sanctuaries  were 

*  Robertson,  Ch.  History,  B.  IV.,  Ch.  II.,  p.  294.   8vo  edition. 


From  Constant  inc.  to  the  Reformation.     2  1 5 

profaned,  their  monasteries  devastated,  and  their  estates 
turned  into  deserts  or  appropriated  by  laymen. 

This  disintegration,  proceeding  as  long  as  there  were 
heirs  to  a  deceased  king,  and  only  fortuitously  arrested 
by  the  failure  of  one  or  another  branch  of  the  family 
tree,  was  the  great  cause  of  the  moral  and  political 
decay  of  Europe  in  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries.  By 
the  Treaty  of  Verdun,  the  Empire  was  divided  into  three 
independent  sovereignties,  under  Lothair,  who  bore  the 
title  of  Emperor,  Louis  the  Germanic,  and  Charles  the 
Bald.  In  the  next  generation  seven  kingdoms  were  made 
for  the  two  sons  of  Lothair,  the  three  of  Louis,  and  the 
two  of  Charles.  But  these  were  not  all  contempo- 
raneous. Lothair  and  his  two  sons  died  before  Louis 
and  Charles,  and  they  divided  their  dominions,  Charles 
becoming  Emperor  for  two  years.  Louis  and  Charles 
died  within  a  year  of  each  other  (876-7)  and  then  there 
were  five  or  six  contemporaneous  kingdoms.  In  a  few 
years  more  five  of  the  kings  were  dead  without  heirs, 
and  the  remaining  son  of  Louis  the  Germanic,  known 
in  history  as  Charles  the  Fat,  succeeded  to  the  whole, 
and  for  a  short  time  it  seemed  as  if  the  Empire  were 
reunited.  But  Charles  the  Fat  had  so  little  real  power 
and  showed  so  little  ability  that  his  people  deposed  him ; 
and  France  reverted  to  a  grandson  of  Charles  the  Bald, 
known  as  Charles  the  Simple,  while  the  Germans  set  up 
Arnulph,  an  illegitimate  son  of  Carloman,  of  Bavaria.  At 
the  same  time  a  Kingdom  of  Provence  was  formed  in 
the  South  of  France,   and  a  noble  named  Boson,  who 


2i6    CJiristcndoin  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

was  connected  with  the  Carlovingians  only  by  marriage 
was  made  king  ;  and  Italy  and  the  imperial  title  were 
disputed  by  two  powerful  Italian  nobles,  Guido  and 
Berengar.  At  the  end  of  the  ninth  century  there  were 
seven  kingdoms  in  what  had  been  the  Empire.  But  the 
disintegration  went  farther.  In  the  attempts  to  possess 
themselves  of  the  governments  that  fell  vacant  by  the 
lapse  of  heirs,  the  surviving  kings  weakened  the  royal 
authority  by  conferring  privileges  and  benefices  upon 
their  partisans,  and  making  concessions  to  them. 
Charles  the  Bald,  in  his  eagerness  to  obtain  the  title  of 
Emperor,  acknowledged  not  only  the  Empire,  but  the 
kingdoms  of  France  and  Italy  to  be  elective,  while  he 
conceded  not  only  fiefs  but  counties  and  lordships  to  be 
hereditary — thus  strengthening  the  inferior  while  he 
weakened  the  superior.  The  revenues  of  the  great 
abbeys  were  assigned  to  lords  whose  interest  it  was 
important  to  gain,  while  all  benefices  which  enriched 
the  vassal  were  so  much  taken  away  from  the  estates 
and  revenues  of  the  king.  In  a  short  time  there  were 
nobles  who,  although  entitled  only  dukes  or  counts, 
were  in  reality  independent  sovereigns,  more  powerful 
and  more  wealthy  than  the  king  to  whom  they  owed 
allegiance  but  did  not  obey.  M.  Guizot  enumerates 
twenty-nine  of  these  fiefs  in  France,  at  the  end  of  the 
ninth  century ;  by  the  end  of  the  tenth  they  had  in- 
creased to  fifty-five. 

In  the  decay  of  the  Empire  of  Charlemagne,  Western 
Christendom  was  exposed  on  all  its  sides  to  the  devas- 


Fro7n  Constantme  to  the  Refor77iation.     2 1 7 

tations  of  heathen  or  Mohammedan  enemies.  Not  only 
the  Northmen  on  the  west  and  north,  but  the  Slavs  and 
Hungarians  on  the  east  and  the  Saracens  on  the  south 
made  their  predatory  inroads  with  impunity,  and  carried 
devastation  and  misery  into  all  the  exposed  provinces. 
Under  these  circumstances  the  first  step  towards  the 
regeneration  of  Germany,  as  well  as  of  France  was 
necessarily  the  revival  of  its  military  power.  On  the 
lapse  of  the  direct  Carlovingian  line,  Arnulph,  an  illegit- 
imate son  ofCarloman  (Emperor  before  Charles  the  Fat), 
became  King  of  Germany  and  titular  Emperor.  He 
was  an  able  man,  and  checked  the  ravages  of  the  North- 
men on  the  German  rivers.  His  line  ended  with  his  son 
Louis  the  Child.  The  Germans  then  elected  Conrad  of 
Franconia,  and  on  his  death  Henry  of  Saxony  (Henry 
the  Fowler),  A.D.  919.  At  the  accession  of  Henry  the 
Germans  were  so  depressed  that  they  paid  tribute  to 
the  Hungarians  as  the  price  for  a  truce  of  ten  years. 
During  this  ten  years  Henry  devoted  himself  to  the 
training  of  his  people  in  the  use  of  arms;  the  nobles 
were  taught  by  tournaments  to  fight  on  horseback,  and 
the  men  of  lower  rank  were  assembled  near  their  villages 
every  third  day  for  military  exercises.  Henry  also 
built  walled  towns  as  places  of  refuge  and  defence, 
and  required  that  provisions  should  be  stored,  and 
markets  and  fairs  held  in  them.  When  his  prepara- 
tions were  complete,  he  refused  further  tribute  to  the 
Magyars,  and  defeated  them  in  battle.  His  son  Otho 
the  Great  completed  the  deliverance  of  Germany,  and 


2 1 8    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

in  a   few  years  the  Hungarians  themselves  professed 
Christianity  under  their  King  St.  Stephen. 

In  France,  the  national  revival  took  the  same  course. 
I  have  mentioned  that  Charles  the  Bald  prohibited  the 
building  of  castles  by  the  holders  of  fiefs,  notwithstand- 
ing the  need  of  fortifications  upon  the  navigable  rivers, 
and  his  own  culpable  negligence  in  not  erecting  them. 
In  spite  of  that  prohibition  castles  were  built,  and  more 
and  more  in  the  following  reigns.  The  owners  of  these 
castles  while  they  were  oppressive  to  the  people,  and 
given  to  plunder  on  occasion,  and  free  to  wage  war 
against  each  other  on  their  own  account,  yet  felt  the 
necessity  of  protecting  their  own  vassals  as  far  as  they 
were  able  ;  and  under  their  leadership  the  military 
spirit  of  the  French  nation  began  to  revive.  Some  of 
the  nobles  like  Robert  the  Strong,  of  Paris,  and  his  son 
Eudes,  were  able  to  defeat  the  Normans  and  to  drive 
them  back.  The  Normans  themselves  having  reduced 
much  of  the  country  to  a  desert,  found  less  to  plunder, 
and  began  to  make  settlements  upon  the  waste  lands 
which  they  had  ruined.  In  911  Charles  the  Simple 
granted  to  Rollo,  the  Norman  chief,  the  great  fief  which 
was  afterwards  known  as  Normandy,  the  duke  of  which 
became  the  first  peer  of  the  realm.  The  Norman,  thus 
admitted  within  the  pale  of  civilized  and  Christian 
Europe,  speedily  advanced  in  culture  and  increased  in 
power,  and  played  a  prominent  part  in  history.  In  these 
ways  a  military  aristocracy  was  formed,  balancing  the 
political  influence  of  the  Churchmen  ;  and  the  result  was 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     219 

ultimately  beneficial  to  the  State  and  to  the  Church, 
although  fatal  to  the  Carlovingian  princes.  In  987, 
Hugh  Capet,  a  descendant  of  Robert  the  Strong,  the 
first  of  these  nobles  in  rank  and  power,  was  crowned 
King  of  France,  and  the  last  Carlovingian  was  treated 
as  a  rebel  against  him.  But  many  years  were  yet  to 
pass,  before  the  French  monarchy  extended  its  rule 
over  the  whole  of  France. 

Connected  with  this  revival  of  the  power  to  cope 
with  foreign  enemies,  there  was  the  restoration  of  some 
sort  of  internal  order  by  the  development  of  the  feudal 
system  under  which,  through  the  due  subordination  of 
fiefs,  the  legal  and  moral  authority  of  the  sovereign  was 
admitted  in  theory,  and,  as  the  physical  power  attended 
the  moral  authority,  was  gradually  established  in  fact. 
At  the  same  time  there  appear  during  this  period  indi- 
cations of  reviving  municipal  life  ;  the  cities,  particularly 
in  Italy,  thrown  upon  themselves  for  defence,  rebuilt 
their  walls,  their  magistrates  received  an  accession  of 
authority  to  meet  the  responsibility  thrown  upon  them, 
industry  revived  and  the  population  began  to  increase. 
In  Germany  also,  the  Emperors  favored  the  urban 
population,  and  the  free  imperial  cities  and  the  towns 
founded  and  sustained  by  the  policy  of  Henry  the 
Fowler  and  his  successors,  became  important  factors  in 
the  body  politic. 

Now  what  I  want  to  point  out  particularly  is,  that 
with  this  revival  of  the  military  and  political  spirit  in 
the  new  nations  of  Europe,  there  proceeded  with  equal 


2  20     Christe7idom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

steps  a  revival  of  the  religious  spirit  ;  showing  that 
whatever  may  have  been  the  difficulties  of  the  times, 
and  whatever  truth  there  maybe  in  the  accusation  that 
the  great  prelates,  clerical  and  monastic,  were  secular- 
ized by  their  connection  with  political  events,  the 
heart  of  the  Church  was  still  sound,  and  in  despite  of 
the  superstition  and  ignorance  and  violence  of  the  age, 
it  was  doing  Christ's  work  among  the  people.  And  it  is 
important  to  note,  in  view  of  subsequent  developments, 
that  this  revival  was  independent  of  Rome,  and  most  ap- 
parent to  the  north  of  the  Alps.  The  religious  reforms  of 
Charlemagne  and  Louis  the  Pious  bore  their  fruits  in 
obscurity  it  may  be,  but  they  did  bear  them,  and  we 
may  not  doubt  when  we  find  an  earnest  religious 
movement  spreading  everywhere  in  the  eleventh 
century,  that  its  roots  were  taking  hold  in  the 
tenth.  In  the  first  place,  the  habits  of  study 
introduced  into  the  monasteries  and  cathedrals  by 
the  enlightened  policy  of  Charlemagne  did  not  die 
out  in  the  succeeding  period.  Such  men  as  Hincmar, 
Scotus  Erigena,  Gottschalk  and  others,  and  the  con- 
troversies in  which  they  were  engaged,  show  a  mental 
activity  for  which  we  look  in  vain  under  the  later  Mero- 
vingians, or  the  mayors  of  the  palace  ;  and  the  fact 
that  the  libraries,  composed  of  manuscripts  written  with 
difficulty,  and  therefore  costly  and  precious,  were 
made  up  chiefly  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  the  commen- 
taries of  the  Fathers,  and  the  lives  of  the  saints, 
brought  the  studiously  inclined  much  nearer  the  pure 


From  Constanfine  to  the  Reformation.     2  2  r 

Word  of  God,  than  we  might  be  at  first  inclined  to  sup- 
pose from  what  is  popularly  believed  concerning  the 
dark  ages.  And  whatever  may  be  said  of  the  ignorance 
of  the  parochial  clergy,  those  of  them  who  could  read  at 
all  (and  they  had  to  be  able  to  do  that  to  perform  their 
office),  would  find  in  the  office-books  of  the  Church  and 
the  extracts  from  Holy  Scripture  which  they  contained, 
the  sum  of  Christian  doctrine,  and  the  Word  of  God,  to 
guide  them  in  such  instruction  as  they  gave  their  people. 
Then  again,  the  changes  in  the  penitential  system  of  the 
Church,  faulted  by  rigorous  canonists  at  the  time,  as 
well  as  in  later  ages,  as  corruptions,  nevertheless  bear 
witness  to  the  sense  of  sin,  and  the  need  of  repentance, 
and  were  a  practical  attempt  to  bring  it  home  to  the 
conscience  of  the  sinner.  The  ritual  of  the  Church  was 
on  the  whole  pure  and  uncorrupt,  and  brought  the 
worshipper  into  the  presence  of  God  with  reverence  and 
devotion,  and  instructed  him  in  the  faith  of  Christ  by 
the  round  of  fast  and  festival  and  the  course  of  the 
Christian  year.  The  successful  prosecution  of  exten- 
sive missions  in  the  tenth  century,  not  only  by  the 
Greek  Church  in  Russia,  but  by  the  German  Church  in 
Denmark  and  Sweden,  in  Bohemia  and  Hungary,  shows 
the  spiritual  vitality  of  the  German  Church.  The 
Saxon  Emperors,  Henry  the  Fowler,  and  the  Othos 
were  profoundly  and  sincerely  religious  men  ;  the  last 
of  the  line,  Henry  H.,  is  a  saint  as  well  as  an  Emperor, 
and  a  saint  of  the  kind  it  befits  a  devout  layman,  and  a 
vigorous  and  wise  Emperor  to  be.     Henry  IH.,  the  son 


2  2  2    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

of  Conrad  the  head  of  the  Franconian  line,  under  whom 
the  Hildebrandine  movement  began,  was  one  of  the 
most  devout,  as  well  as  one  of  the  greatest  sovereigns 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  Church  which  had  such  sons, 
and  in  whose  bosom  were  nourished  the  German  Popes 
who  preceded  Hildebrand  and  restored  the  moral  and 
religious  tone  of  the  papacy  after  its  disgraceful  history 
of  the  tenth  century,  had  not  been  unfaithful  to  its 
trust. 

In  France,  likewise,  just  as  soon  as  the  kingdom  be- 
gan to  settle  down,  as  well  as  in  Northern  Italy  when 
the  imperial  power  was  restored,  there  is  evidence  of 
like  survival  of  real  religious  influence  through  these 
disorderly  times.  The  extensive  monastic  reforms  of 
Clugny,  of  Camaldoli,  of  Vallombrosa,  with  their  allied 
orders,  which  belong  to  this  period,  revived  the  life  of 
the  great  Benedictine  family,  and  affected  the  whole 
Church  of  these  regions.  In  Normandy,  we  find 
immense  religious  activity — not  perhaps  always  of  the 
kind  we  should  like  to  see,  but  real  in  this,  that  it  is 
founded  distinctly  on  the  faith  in  Christ  as  the  Saviour 
of  mankind  and  the  ruler  of  the  world.  The  Truce  of 
God,  originating  in  Aquitaine  in  the  early  part  of 
the  eleventh  century,  was  an  attempt  of  the  Church  to 
mitigate  the  miseries  of  private  warfare,  and  it  spread 
thence  through  other  regions,  bearing  witness  to  the 
desire  of  the  Church  to  obtain  the  beatitude  of  the 
peacemakers.  In  fact,  through  all  this  period  it  is 
true,  what  M.  Guizot  says  of  the  Middle  Ages  in  general. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     223 

that  they  contrast  with  the  early  history  of  Greek  and 
Roman  society  by  the  presence  of  a  lofty  ideal  in  the 
midst  of  a  conduct  which  fells  far  short  of  it.  "  In 
these  middle  ages  which  we  are  studying,"  he  says, 
"  facts  are  habitually  detestable  ;  crimes,  disorders  o 
all  kinds  abound  ;  and  still  men  have  in  their  minds, 
in  their  imaginations,  pure,  elevated  instincts  and 
desires  ;  their  notions  of  virtue  are  far  more  developed, 
their  ideas  of  justice  incomparably  better  than  what 
is  practised  around  them,  than  what  they  often  practise 
themselves.  A  certain  moral  idea  hovers  over  their 
rude,  tempestuous  society,  and  attracts  the  regard, 
obtains  the  respect  of  men  whose  life  scarcely  ever 
reflects  its  image.  Christianity  must  doubtless  be 
ranked  among  the  number  of  the  principal  causes  of  this 
fact  ;  its  precise  characteristic  is  to  inspire  men  with  a 
great  moral  ambition,  to  hold  constantly  before  their 
eyes  a  type  infinitely  superior  to  human  reality,  and  to 
excite  them  to  reproduce  it."  The  "precise character- 
istic "  of  Christianity  is  something  much  higher  than 
this,  but  let  that  pass.  The  facts  noted  in  this  extract 
show  themselves  in  the  period  of  which  I  am  speaking. 
Just  as  soon  as  the  central  governments  of  the  several 
nations  gathered  strength  again,  the  strength  of  the 
religious  influence  shows  itself  in  various  directions,  and 
proves  that  the  national  churches  were  healthy  and 
sound. 


V. 

PAPALISM. 


V. 


PAPALISM. 


We  have  now  to  consider  the  great  movement  which 
exalted  the  Papacy  to  the  head  of  Western  Christen- 
dom. We  have  seen  in  the  last  lecture  the  collapse 
of  the  imperialist  scheme  of  Charlemagne,  in  which  the 
head  of  the  State  was  also  head  of  the  Church  ;  the 
natural  reaction  was  to  the  opposite  extreme,  to  a 
theory  by  which  it  was  assumed  that  there  is  an  earthly 
head  of  the  visible  Church,  and  that  this  head  of  the 
Church  is,  by  virtue  of  his  spiritual  authority,  also  head 
of  the  State.  This  theory  was  fully  worked  out  and 
reduced  to  practice  by  the  monk  Hildebrand,  who 
became  Pope  by  the  name  of  Gregory  VII.,  and  it  is 
therefore  convenientlycalled  the  Hildebrandine  theory, 
and  the  period  in  which  it  flourished  the  Hildebrandine 
period.  The  Hildebrandine  period  of  the  Papacy  lasted 
from  the  accession  of  Leo  IX.,  A.D.  1048,  to  the  death  of 
Boniface  VIII.,  A.D.  1303,  a  term  of  255  years.  The  pow- 
er of  the  Roman  pontiff  then  suffered  a  collapse  as  com- 
plete and  disastrous  as  ever  befel  human  monarchy.  It 
will  be  the  object  of  the  next  lecture  to  trace  the  causes 
of  that  collapse  ;  in  the  present  lecture,  I  purpose  to 


228    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

set  forth  the  rise  and  progress  of  the  Papal  idea,  and 
its  workings  during  the  period  of  its  supremacy. 

We  are  under  no  need  of  refusing  to  admit  that  the 
Papal  theory,  as  held  by  its  promoters,  was  a  theory  of 
Reformation.  I  have  before  remarked  that  it  is  an 
error  to  speak  of  the  great  crisis  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury as  if  it  were  the  only  reform  or  attempted  reform 
of  the  Church.  The  whole  history  of  the  Church 
is  a  constant  struggle  with  the  evil  of  the  world  ; 
and  therefore  any  period  of  great  religious  ac- 
tivity is  a  period  of  reformation.  The  imperialist 
movement  of  Charlemagne  was  a  reformation  ;  so  was 
the  Papalist  movement  of  Hildebrand  ;  so  was  the 
movement  for  reformation  by  councils  in  the  fifteenth 
century.  In  fact  the  Church  is  always  endeavoring  to 
reform  itself — that  is,  to  adapt  itself  to  the  changes  in 
human  society,  and  to  remove  those  abuses  which  have 
grown  up  through  want  of  adaptation  to  the  altered 
circumstances  of  advancing  time.  There  is  an  un- 
changeable order  in  the  divine  constitution  of  the 
Church,  and  there  is  a  changeable  order  ;  to  tamper 
with  the  one  is  a  corruption  of  the  order  of  the  Church, 
to  crystallize  or  fossilize  the  other  is  likewise  a  corrup- 
tion ;  there  are  therefore  corruptions  of  innovation  and 
corruptions  of  conservatism;  and  it  is  our  duty  as  faith- 
ful and  wise  stewards,  in  bringing  out  of  our  treasures 
things  new  and  old,  to  judge  wisely  and  rightly  con- 
cerning that  which  is  new  and  that  which  is  old.  The 
Catholic  Church  is  adapted  to  all  states  and  conditions 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     229 

of  human  life  and  human  society  ;  it  works  equally  in 
an  empire  and  in  a  republic,  among  rude,  illiterate 
peoples,  and  among  the  most  polished  and  cultured. 
And  it  will  adapt  itself  to  its  field  of  work  by  rightly 
arranging  the  changeable  elements  of  its  organization, 
while  preserving  immutable  the  unchangeable  elements 
of  its  divine  order.  The  feudal  Church  would  not 
work  well  in  the  nineteenth  century;  but  neither  would 
the  nineteenth  century  Church  have  worked  well  in 
feudal  times  ;  and  yet  both  in  the  feudal  ages  and  in 
the  nineteenth  century  the  bishops  of  the  Church  are 
true  bishops,  its  worship  a  true  worship,  and  its  sacra- 
ments food  for  the  faithful  and  the  penitent.  Take  it 
as  a  guiding  principle  in  your  study  of  ecclesiastical 
history,  that — the  essentials  of  the  divine  order  being 
preserved,  the  threefold  Ministry,  the  Creeds,  the  Holy 
Scriptures  and  the  Sacraments  necessary  to  salvation — 
the  other  arrangements  are  subject  to  revision  accord- 
ing to  the  changes  of  times  and  men's  manners  ;  and 
that  the  conservative  and  the  progressive  may  honestly 
differ  as  to  the  expediency  or  the  necessity  of  any  pro- 
posed change,  and  may  earnestly  contend  each  for  his 
own  side  ;  you  will  then  have  the  key  to  the  expla- 
nation of  the  movements  you  are  studying,  without  the 
necessity  of  thinking  every  difference  from  our  system 
of  the  present  day  to  be  a  corruption,  or  of  attributing 
every  seeming  corruption  to  the  immorality  of  the 
priesthood,  and  every  project  of  reform  to  their  unhal- 
lowed   ambition.     A  too  stubborn  conservatism   may 


230    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

make  the  laudable  expedient  of  one  age  the  corruption 
of  the  next;  a  too  sanguine  progressivism  may  intro- 
duce a  corruption  in  the  theory  intended  to  justify  a 
practical  effort  at  reform. 

But  while  we  admit  that  the  promoters  of  the  Hilde- 
brandine  theory  desired  and  intended  that  it  should  be 
the  means  of  a  reformation  of  manifest  evils  in  the 
imperialist  system,  we  must  not  blind  our  eyes  to  the 
facts  of  history,  which  show  its  real  nature  and  opera- 
tion. Our  objection  to  the  Papacy  is  not  that  it  was 
a  powerful  factor  in  politics  and  religion  in  the  twelfth 
and  thirteenth  centuries — its  influence,  great  as  it  was, 
has  been  much  overrated — but  that  it  claims  to  be  a 
divine  and  unchangeable  institution,  essential  to  the 
Church;  when  its  history  in  its  rise,  culmination  and 
decline  shows  it  to  be  no  such  thing.  And  therefore 
we  are  under  no  obligation  to  asperse  the  character  of 
the  great  Popes  of  this  period,  because  we  see  them  to 
have  been  working  on  a  false  theory  of  their  power  and 
its  responsibilities.  Our  objections  to  the  Papacy  do 
not  lie  against  this  or  that  Pope,  but  against  the  Papal 
theory  itself;  the  men  who  believed  in  it  and  endeav- 
ored to  administer  it  honestly  were  honest  men  ;  but 
their  theory  was  none  the  less  false  ;  their  assumptions 
were  not  facts ;  the  divine  right  of  the  Papacy  to 
supreme  rule  over  Church  and  State  is  not  a  fact  ;  and 
the  proof  that  it  is  not  a  fact  lies  in  the  history  of  the 
Papacy  itself — in  the  various  steps  by  which  its  usurpa- 
tion was  established,  in  the  failure  to  make  good  its 


From  Const antine  to  the  Reformation.     231 

claim  when  its  power  was  at  its  height,  in  the  woful 
collapse  of  the  fourteenth,  and  the  dreadful  moral 
degradation  of  the  fifteenth  centuries. 

The  germ  of  the  Hildebrandine  theory  of  the  Papacy 
is  to  be  found  in  that  remarkable  collection  published 
some  time  in  the  first  half  of  the  ninth  century,  known 
as  the  False  Decretals.  While  the  visions  of  ecclesias- 
tical supremacy  of  which  I  spoke  in  the  last  lecture 
were  misleading  the  chiefs  of  the  Neustrian  or  French 
Church,  and  ruining  the  Neustrian  Kingdom,  other 
visions  of  the  relation  of  Church  and  State  were  work- 
ing in  the  brain  of  some  unknown  dreamer  or  dreamers 
in  that  part  of  Germany  or  Austrasia  which  had  been 
the  scene  of  the  labors  of  St.  Boniface.  I  have  before 
remarked  on  the  peculiar  relation  of  St.  Boniface  to  the 
see  of  Rome,  and  also  upon  the  condition  of  the  Aus- 
trasian  Episcopate  in  his  day.  St.  Boniface  had  been 
acknowledged  as  primate  of  the  German  and  Austra- 
sian  Church  by  reason  of  Ijis  "apostolic  vicariate,"  and 
had  endeavored  to  revive  the  authority  of  the  metro- 
politans, which  had  fallen  into  abeyance,  and  to  bring 
them  into  subordination  to  the  see  of  Rome,  by  per- 
suading them  to  accept  the  pallium.  But  the  bishops, 
who  had,  in  the  political  changes  of  the  preceding 
period,  thrown  off  the  metropolitan  government,  were 
unwilling  to  have  it  restored  as  a  substantive  power, 
especially  as  in  the  new  relation  to  the  Empire  the 
metropolitans  were  more  closely  related  to  the  princes, 
and  were  the  means   by   which   they  exercise(^  their 


232    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


authority  over  the  Church.  Out  of  these  apparently 
contradictory  elements  there  was  formulated  a  theory 
of  the  Church  constitution,  and  of  its  relation  to  the 
State,  which  were  set  forth  in  the  False  Decretals. 
That  it  was  not  the  primitive  theory  is  evident  from 
the  necessity  of  supporting  it  by  forged  documents  ; 
neither  was  it  the  fully  developed  theory  of  Gregory 
VII.  and  his  successors,  for  it  does  not  seem  to  assert 
the  Papal  supremacy  over  the  secular  government.  It 
evidently  grew  out  of  the  circumstances  of  the  time, 
and  the  desire  to  emancipate  the  ecclesiastical  body 
from  that  control  by  the  lay  power  which  had  been  the 
principle  of  the  reforms  of  Charlemagne.  In  the  opinion 
of  careful  students,  the  False  Decretals  were  not  forged 
in  the  interest  of  Rome,  although  Rome  ultimately 
reaped  the  benefit  of  them  ;  their  object  rather  was  to 
make  the  bishops  independent  of  all  immediate  author- 
ity, whether  lay  or  ecclesiastical,  by  subordinating  them 
to  the  distant  and  therefore  less  intrusive  juris- 
diction of  the  Bishop  of  Rome.  The  pretext  for  their 
publication  is  stated  with  naive  simplicity  in  the  preface 
to  the  completed  collection.  It  appears  that  the 
administration  of  justice  was  so  improved  since  the  bar- 
barian codes  had  been  reduced  to  writing,  that  the 
judges  were  accustomed  to  demand  the  written  text  as 
the  basis  of  their  decisions,  and  therefore  the  authors  of 
the  False  Decretals  set  themselves  to  supply  a  code  of 
ecclesiastical  law  which  should  meet  this  requirement. 
"Many   good    Christians,"  say   they,  "  are    reduced    to 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     233 

silence,  and  compelled  to  bear  the  sins  of  others 
against  their  own  better  knowledge,  because  they  are 
unprovided  with  documents  by  which  they  might  con- 
vince ecclesiastical  judges  of  the  truth  of  what  they 
know  to  be  the  law;  seeing  that  though  what  they 
allege  may  be  altogether  right,  yet  it  is  not  heeded  by 
the  judges  unless  it  be  confirmed  by  written  documents, 
or  by  recorded  decisions,  or  made  to  appear  in  the 
course  of  some  known  judicial  proceeding."  They 
therefore  added  to  the  genuine  code  as  compiled  by 
Isidore  of  Seville,  "the  decretal  epistles  of  certain  apos- 
tolic men,  *  *  as  many,"  they  say,  "as  we  have  been 
enabled  to  find,  down  to  Pope  Sylvester ;  after  these 
we  have  annexed  the  rest  of  the  decretals  of  the  Roman 
prelates  down  to  St.  Gregory  [the  Great],  together 
with  certain  epistles  of  that  pontiff;  in  all  which,  by 
virtue  of  the  dignity  of  the  Apostolic  See,  resideth 
authority  equal  to  that  of  the  Councils  :  so  that  the 
discipline  of  the  ecclesiastical  order  being  thus  by  our 
labors  reduced  and  digested  into  one  body  of  law  the 
holy  bishops  may  be  instructed  in  the  entire  rules  of 
the  fathers  ;  and  thus  obedient  ministers  and  people 
may  be  imbued  with  spiritual  precedents,  and  be  no 
longer  deceived  by  the  practices  of  the  wicked."  *  The 
collection,  therefore,  which  goes  by  the  name  of  the 


*  I  take  the  above  from  Greeawood's  Cathedra  Petri,  Vol.  III.,  pages 
182-4.  At  Nashotah  I  had  the  use  of  Hinschius'  edition  of  the  False 
Decretals,  and  made  myself,  in  a  general  way,  familiar  with  its  contents; 
but  am  not  now  able  to  refer  to  it. 


234    Chrisiendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

False  Decretals,  purported  to  be  the  complete  body  of 
canon  and  decretal  law  then  existing  ;  it  contains 
many  genuine  though  garbled  documents,  and  the 
forgeries  of  preceding  ages,  such  as  the  "  Donation  of 
Constantine,"  as  well  as  those  which  the  compilers 
forged  for  the  occasion.  It  was  intended  to  be  cited  in 
the  ecclesiastical  courts  as  the  law  for  the  clergy,  just  as 
Salic  law  was  cited  for  the  Franks,  or  Gothic  law  for  the 
Goths,  or  Roman  law  for  the  Romans.  And  as  so 
cited,  it  was  intended,  as  I  said,  to  secure  immunity  to 
the  clergy,  absolutely  from  all  secular  jurisdiction,  and 
proximately  from  the  immediate  jurisdiction  of  the 
metropolitans.  It  attained  this  last  result  by  allowing 
an  appeal  to  Rome  before  the  trial  of  a  case ;  thus 
transferring  it  to  a  distant  tribunal,  where  witnesses 
could  not  appear,  and  therefore  where  an  accusation 
would  naturally  fall  to  the  ground.  The  ultimate  object 
seems  to  have  been  to  weld  the  hierarchy  into  a  com- 
pact body,  centred  in  the  see  of  Rome,  self-governed 
and  independent  of  all  other  power  whatsoever. 

Now  of  course  it  is  a  great  blot  upon  ecclesiastical 
history  that  the  False  Decretals  exist.  They  are  un- 
deniable forgeries,  touching  the  most  sacred  of  all 
matters,  the  Constitution  of  the  Church  of  Christ.  But 
I  must  point  out  to  you  in  passing,  that  the  moral 
responsibility  for  them  rests,  not  upon  the  Church  of 
the  ninth  century  at  large,  but  upon  the  individuals 
who  composed  them,  and  upon  the  see  of  Rome  which 
adopted  and  enforced  them.     As  a  matter  of  fact  they 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      235 

were  not  generally  received  and  acted  upon,  until  the 
political  force  of  the  Hildebrandine  movement  gave 
them  vitality,  and  they  were  incorporated  in  the  Dccrc- 
Uim  of  Gratian.  At  the  same  time  the  condition  of 
learning  was  such,  in  the  absence  of  the  printing-press, 
that  one  who  possessed  a  genuine  code  of  the  canons  in 
his  cathedral  library,  could  not  be  sure  that  that  was 
all  of  the  canon  law  then  in  existence.  Manuscripts 
were  fragmentary ;  one  was  better  than  another ;  and 
the  presumption  was  that  the  one  which  contained  the 
most  was  the  best.  We  need  not  wonder,  therefore,  at 
the  hesitation  of  men  who  felt  that  the  system  of  the 
decretals  was  not  the  system  of  the  Church,  and  yet 
were  not  sure  that  the  documents  were  forgeries, 
because  they  had  not  seen  them  before ;  nor  need  we 
deny  the  sincerity  of  men  who  accepted  them  when 
they  were  published,  being  without  the  critical  knowl- 
edge to  detect  their  falsehood.  Such  an  apology, 
however,  can  scarcely  be  made  for  the  Bishops  of  Rome 
who  first  adopted  them.  They  must  have  known  that 
they  were  not  genuine.* 

While  this  dream  of  ecclesiastical  immunity  was 
being  indulged  north  of  the  Alps,  what  was  the  actual 
state  of  the  Roman  see  .''  When  the  False  Decretals 
first  saw  the  light,  there  sat  in  the  chair  of  St.  Peter 


*  Disingenuously,  Nicholas  I.  replied  to  Hincmar,  who  threw  doubts 
upon  the  authroity  of  some  citations:  That  the  Church  of  Rome  could 
not  be  ignorant  of  documents  which  were  in  its  own  archives.  See  the 
letter  in  Labbe  Concilia,  Vol.  X.,  Col.  282. 


236     Christendom  ncclcsiastical  aiid  Political 

one  of  its  great  bishops,  Nicholas  I.  I  need  only  allude 
to  his  three  great  causes,  the  affairs  of  Photius  and 
Ignatius  of  Constantinople,  the  divorce  of  King  Lothair, 
and  the  controversies  with  Hincmar  of  Rheims  to  bring 
his  personality  before  you.  What  it  is  important  to 
remark  is,  that  he  was  chosen  by  the  direct  influence  of 
the  Emperor  Louis  (grandson  of  Louis  the  Pious),  the 
last  of  the  Carlovingians  who  had  any  real  power  in 
Italy.  Nicholas  was  succeeded  by  Hadrian  II.,  a  re- 
spectable and  able  Pope,  and  he  by  John  Vlli.,  still  in 
the  reign  of  Louis,  But  Louis  died  in  876,  and  then, 
although  Charles  the  Bald  and  others  after  him  of  the 
Carlovingian  line  bore  the  name  of  Emperor,  the  real 
power  of  the  imperial  office  was  in  abeyance,  as  we 
have  seen,  for  nearly  a  century.  The  title  passed  to 
that  potentate  who  was  most  powerful  in  Italy,  and  was 
given  to  or  usurped  by  several  Italian  nobles.  It  was 
not  until  Otho  the  Great  was  crowned  at  Rome  in  962, 
that  there  was  a  real  Emperor,  in  power  as  well  as  in 
name  ;  and  it  was  not  until  1045  (with  the  exception  of 
a  short  period  (circa  1000)  under  Otho  III.,  who  made 
the  illustrious  Gerbert  Pope  under  the  name  of  Sylves- 
ter II.)  that  the  Emperor  intervened  directly  in  the 
affairs  of  the  Papacy.  Now  through  all  this  period — 
that  is,  from  the  latter  part  of  the  ninth  to  the  middle 
of  the  eleventh  century,  the  Papacy  was  in  a  state  of 
the  most  abject  degradation.  Italy  was  filled  with  dis- 
orders by  the  turbulent  barons  who  quarreled  over  its 
dismembered  carcase  ;    the    Saracens    enacted  in   the 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      237 

Mediterranean  the  part  that  the  Northmen  did  in 
France  ;  and  Rome  and  its  bishopric  were  the  prey  of 
the  lawless  aristocracy  who  held  the  rule  over  it  for  the 
time.  During  the  first  half  of  the  tenth  century  the 
Papal  chair  was  occupied  by  the  creatures,  paramours 
and  connections  of  those  infamous  women,  the  two 
Theodoras  and  Marozia  ;  then,  after  Otho  had  deposed 
the  last  and  worst  of  them,  John  XII.,  there  was  a  time 
in  which  Popes  were  set  up  and  put  down,  banished  or 
murdered,  as  one  faction  or  another  came  into  power  ; 
then  Otho  III.  made  two  respectable  Popes,  one  a  Ger- 
man, Gregory  V.,  the  other  a  Frenchman,  Sylvester  II.  ;* 
but  the  united  reigns  of  these  were  only  seven  years  (A. 
D.  996-1003);  and  then  there  came  in  the  line  of  Tus- 
culan  Popes,  creatures  of  the  Counts  of  Tusculum,  for 
forty  years — the  last  of  whom,  Benedict  IX.,  was  so  vile 
that  his  archpresbyter,  who  took  the  name  of  Gregory 
VI.,  thought  he  was  doing  a  meritorious  act  in  pur- 
chasing his  right  to  the  Papal  chair  for  a  sum  of 
money. 

Baronius  in  narrating  the  history  of  the  Papacy  dur- 
ing this  period,  is  saved  from  the  temptation  to  palliate 
its  enormities  by  the  thought  that  its  regeneration  from 
such  a  moral  sepulchre  in  the  succeeding  age  is  a  mani- 
fest proof  of  its  divine  origin  and  indefeasible  authority. 

*  "  With  the  substitution  of  these  men  for  the  profiigate  priests  of 
Italy,  began  that  Teutonic  reform  of  the  Papacy  which  raised  it  from  the 
abyss  of  the  tenth  century  to  the  point  where  Hildebrand  found  it.  The 
Emperors  were  working  the  ruin  of  their  power  by  their  most  disinterested 
acts." — Bryce's  Holy  Roman  Empire,  146. 


238    Christe7ido77i  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

The  argument  is  a  neat  one  in  the  hands  of  a  Papal 
controversialist,  but  it  will  not  bear  examination.  If 
the  Papacy,  as  such — if  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  simply 
as  bishop  of  his  own  city  according  to  the  primitive 
system — had  that  inherent  sanctity  which  the  Papal 
theory  requires,  he  should  have  appeared,  at  this  time 
especially,  when  all  the  other  foundations  of  the  earth 
were  out  of  course,  as  the  conservator  of  religion  and 
morality.  He  should  not  have  succumbed  to  the  evil 
of  the  times;  he  should  have  shown  himself  the  pre- 
server of  order,  the  supporter  of  good  government ;  the 
influence  which  regenerated  society  should  have  flowed 
forth  from  Rome,  instead  of  flowing  in  towards  Rome 
from  the  restored  Empire.  What  was  the  fact  .-'  Is  it 
not  plain  upon  the  surface  that  the  revival  of  religion 
to  the  north  of  the  Alps  preceded  and  effected  the 
moral  restoration  of  the  Roman  see  1 — that  the  ag- 
grandizement of  the  Papacy  in  the  last  half  of  the 
eleventh  century  depended  upon,  as  it  followed  after, 
the  revival  of  the  Empire  and  of  the  Kingdom  of 
France  in  the  latter  half  of  the  tenth  century.^ — that 
the  new  blood  of  its  infused  vitality  was  German  blood 
and  French  blood  }  The  purely  political  character  of 
the  Papacy  is  manifest,  not  only  in  the  previous  history 
of  its  relation  to  the  Byzantine  Empire,  but  in  its  abey- 
ance at  this  time,  when  it  could  find  no  great  political 
antagonist. 

I  spoke  at  the  close  of  the  last  lecture  of  the  indica- 
tions of  a  healthy  religious  condition  which  attended  the 


From  Constaiitine  to  the  Reformation.      239 

restoration  of  political  order,  and  which  are  so  plainly 
manifest  in  France  and  Germany  while  the  Papacy  was 
thus  wallowing  in  the  mire.  One  of  the  principal  sources 
of  religious  influence  at  that  time  was  the  monastery 
of  Clugny.  This  celebrated  monastery,  of  which  so 
much  that  is  delightful  reading  is  told  us  by  Dr.  Mait- 
land,  was  founded  as  far  back  as  the  year  912  by 
William,  Duke  of  Auvergne,  by  whose  charter  it  was  to 
be  free  "from  all  interference  of  the  founder  and  his 
family,  of  the  king's  majesty,  and  of  every  earthly 
power."  Clugny  was  situated  in  the  diocese  of  Macon 
in  Burgundy,  which  was  at  that  time  a  part  of  the 
Empire.  Its  influence  spread  far  and  wide  ;  it  adopted 
a  system  of  lay  affiliation  which  drew  persons  in  secu- 
lar life  within  its  circle ;  the  Emperor  Henry  II.  was  a 
conf rater  of  Clugny.  Clugny  began  to  be  a  power  in 
the  religious  world  under  Odo,  the  second  abbot,  who 
succeeded  to  the  government  in  927.  He  had  been 
devoted  by  his  father,  while  in  the  cradle,  to  the  service 
of  God  in  the  Church  of  St.  Martin  at  Tours,  and  was 
brought  up  by  Count  Fulk  the  Good,  who  was  a  canon 
of  that  church.  At  the  age  of  seventeen  his  father 
withdrew  him,  and  placed  him  in  the  military  service 
of  the  Duke  of  Auvergne  ;  but  an  inveterate  headache 
from  which  he  suffered  was  taken  as  a  judgment  upon 
him  for  deserting  the  Church,  and  he  returned  to  Tours, 
where  he  became  schoolmaster  and  precentor.  Later 
he  studied  at  Paris  under  Remigius  of  Auxerre,  and  in  909 
joined  himself  to  Berno  to  lead  the  monastic  life,  bring- 


2  40     Christejidom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

ing  with  him  his  library  of  one  hundred  volumes.  He 
was  with  Berno  when  he  became  the  first  abbot  of 
Clugny,  and  was  chosen  to  succeed  him.  Clugny  was 
fortunate  in  its  abbots.  In  two  hundred  years  it  had 
but  six.  Under  Odo  it  became  a  home  of  learning  as 
well  as  piety.  Odo  was  succeeded  by  Aymar,  and  he, 
becoming  blind,  by  Maiolus,  who  refused  the  earnest 
solicitations  of  Otho  II.  to  accept  the  Papacy.  Maiolus 
governed  the  monastery  forty-six  years  ;  he  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Odilo,  who  was  abbot  fifty-five  years,  and 
he  by  Hugh,  who  held  that  office  sixty  years,  entering 
upon  it  in  the  year  after  Leo  IX.  became  Pope  (1049). 
Under  these  saintly  and  experienced  rulers,  Clugny 
promoted  a  reformation  of  the  monastic  life,  not  merely 
within  its  own  walls,  but  among  many  affiliated  founda- 
tions. The  Cluniac  monks  were  the  first  "order"  in  the 
proper  technical  sense.  The  Benedictine  was  the 
general  rule  of  the  monks,  but  the  Benedictine  monas- 
teries were  not  organized  into  an  order  ;  each  was 
independent  of  the  others,  and  they  were  connected 
together  in  a  common  interest  only  by  the  common 
rule.  Under  Odilo  the  practice  of  affiliating  other 
monasteries  to  Clugny  began,  and  the  organization  of 
the  "Congregation  "  was  completed  by  Hugh,  who  is 
said  to  have  ruled  over  ten  thousand  monks.  By  the 
end  of  the  twelfth  century,  Robertson  tells  us,  the 
number  of  monasteries  connected  with  Clugny,  in 
France,  in  Germany,  in  Italy,  in  England  and  in  Spain, 
amounted  to  two  thousand. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      241 

Now  Hildebrand,  though  an  Itahan,  was  a  monk  of 
Clugny,  and  you  can  readily  see  how,  when  he  became 
the  power  behind  the  Papal  throne,  and  ultimately  the 
Pope  himself,  the  whole  Cluniac  order  became  the 
compactly  organized  and  disciplined  spiritual  army 
of  the  Papacy.  By  its  means  the  entire  monastic 
interest  was  enlisted  on  the  side  of  the  Popes  against 
the  secular  ecclesiastics  who  were  to  be  reduced  to 
subjection  to  the  Papal  despotism.  It  ramified,  as  has 
been  seen,  into  every  country,  its  credit  with  the  people 
was  great,  its  power  therefore  to  organize  public  opinion 
in  favor  of  the  Papal  designs  was  immense.  I  have 
heard  it  said  that  the  secret  of  the  successful  assertion 
of  the  Papal  supremacy  was  that  the  monks  appro- 
priated the  Papacy ;  and  as  the  monks  were  looked 
upon  as  the  true  exponents  of  religion,  obedience  to  the 
Papacy,  when  supported  by  them,  would  seem  to  the 
people  to  be  the  safeguard  of  religion  in  all  men.  The 
contest  of  the  Papacy  with  the  national  Churches  was 
the  contest  of  the  abbot  with  the  bishop,  of  the  monk 
with  the  priest ;  and  this  accounts  for  many  things,  and 
among  others  for  the  ruthlessness  with  which  at  the 
Reformation  Henry  VIII.  swept  the  monks  out  of 
England. 

There  was  another  influence,  I  think,  working  upon 
Hildebrand  at  Clugny,  which  had  much  to  do  with 
shaping  his  ideas  of  the  Papacy,  and  his  policy  as  its 
moving  spirit.  Odilo,  who  was  abbot  of  Clugny  while 
Hildebrand  was  a  monk  there,  was   one  of  the  great 

16 


242     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  a^id  Political 

promoters  of  that  attempt  to  put  a  stop  to  the  miseries 
entailed  by  the  right  of  private  war,  which  was  called 
"  the  Truce  of  God."  There  are  one  or  two  facts  con- 
nected with  that  movement  which  have  not  received 
the  attention  they  deserve.  One  is  the  distinction 
between  "the  Peace"  and  "the  Truce."  The  first 
object  which  the  Councils  which  legislated  on  this  sub- 
ject had  in  view  was  to  secure  to  the  unarmed  classes, 
such  as  clerks,  monks,  peasants,  women,  and  unarmed 
tradesmen  and  their  possessions,  perpetual  immunity 
from  the  rapine  of  war;  the  other  was  to  secure  among 
those  who  bore  arms,  a  truce  for  limited  periods,  as 
from  Thursday  to  Monday  of  each  week,  and  during  the 
more  sacred  seasons  of  the  Church  year,  as  Advent  and 
Christmas,  and  Lent  and  Easter.  Another  fact  is  that 
it  was  in  this  connection  that  the  interdict  was  put  in 
operation  by  the  local  authorities,  before  it  became  a 
weapon  of  the  Popes — as  at  a  Council  of  Limoges, 
A.D.  103 1 ,  under  Aymon,  Archbishop  of  Bourges,  where 
the  bishops,  we  are  told,  on  the  advice  of  Odolric, 
Abbot  of  St.  Martial,  determined,  in  case  the  nobles 
refused  to  observe  the  peace,  to  lay  a  general  excom- 
munication— that  is  an  interdict — upon  their  whole 
territory.*  A  third  and  very  important  fact  is,  that 
the    principle    of   outlawry    was    applied    to    the    of- 


*  Fleury,  B.  59,  Ch.  25.  Robertson  says  that  Baronius  is  very  angry 
with  the  Councils  for  presuming  to  undertake  such  business  without  the 
Pope's  sanction.  My  idea  is  that  the  Popes  learnt  this  from  these  Coun- 
cils. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      243 

fenders  against  the  public  peace,  and  that  the  commons 
or  comminies  first  answered  to  a  levy  en  masse  against 
them.  About  the  year  1000,  William,  Duke  of  Aqui- 
taine,  assembled  a  Council  at  Poitiers,  which  pledged 
the  bishops  and  lords  not  only  to  keep  the  peace  and 
to  do  justice  to  those  who  complained  to  them,  but 
also  to  unite  the  community  in  making  reprisals  upon 
any  one  who  should  break  his  pledge  or  violate  the 
public  peace.*  This  compact  led  to  the  formation  of 
associations  for  this  purpose  ;  and  the  editor  of  Orderi- 
cus  Vitalis  mentions  an  author  who  has  traced  the 
history  of  such  an  association  in  the  province  of  Berri 
for  three  centuries.  He  tells  us  also,  that  Aymon  of 
Bourges,  mentioned  above,  about  the  year  1038  "sum- 
moned the  bishops  of  his  province,  and  with  the  con- 
currence and  support  of  his  suffragans,  promulgated  a 
decree  binding  all  persons  of  the  age  of  fifteen  years 
and  upwards  heartily  to  resist  all  violators  of  the 
common  compact,  and  so  far  from  submitting  to  have 
their  propert;y^  plundered  to  rise  in  arms,  if  occasion 
required,  against  the  marauders.  Not  even  the  minis- 
ters of  religion  were  exempted,  but  taking  the  banners 
from  the  sanctuary  of  the  Lord,  they  were  to  join  the 
rest  of  the  population  and  have  them  borne  against  the 
violators  of  the  sworn  peace. "t  The  editor  of  Orderi- 
cus,   remarking    that  his  author   on  several  occasions 


*Fleury,  B.  58,  Ch.  14. 

fOrdericus  Vitalis,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  52,  Bohn's  Edition. 


244     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

speaks  of  levies  en  masse  oi  the  population,  summoned 
to  arms  by  the  C7irh,  and  marching  to  battle  under  the 
banners  of  their  respective  parishes,  points  out  that 
these  movements  were  in  truth  crusades  directed  by 
the  clergy  against  the  disturbers  of  the  public  peace, 
and  the  natural  results  of  the  enactment  of  what  was 
called  The  Truce  of  God.  Their  importance  increased 
so  that  King  Louis  the  Fat  about  i  io8  summoned  them 
to  aid  him  against  the  rebellious  nobles  ;  and  it  is  from 
this  movement  that  the  influence  of  the  people  in  the 
body  politic  takes  its  rise.* 

*  Ordericus  Vitalis,  B.  XI.,  Ch.  34.  Several  forms  of  the  enactment 
of  the  Trace  of  God  in  the  time  of  Odilo  of  Clugny  and  Hildebrand  are 
given  by  Peter  De  Marca,  De  Concordia  Sacerdotii  et  Imperii,  at  the  end 
of  B.  IV.,  Ch.  14;  but  its  nature  can  be  most  conveniently  illustrated  by 
the  following  from  a  Council  of  Rouen,  A.D.  1096,  after  Urban  II.  had 
made  it  universal  at  the  Council  of  Clermont: 

"  I. — The  holy  synod  (of  Rouen)  has  decreed  that  the  truce  of  God 
shall  be  strictly  observed  from  the  Sunday  before  the  beginning  of  Lent 
to  sunrise  on  Monday  after  the  octave  of  Whitsuntide:  also  from  Wednes- 
day before  Advent  at  sunset  to  the  octave  of  the  Epiphany,  as  well  as 
every  week  in  the  year  from  sunset  on  Wednesday  to  sunrise  on  Monday; 
also  on  all  feasts  of  St.  Mary  and  their  vigils,  and  all  feasts  of  the  apos- 
tles and  their  vigils;  so  that  no  one  shall  assault,  or  wound,  or  slay 
another,  or  take  pledge  or  booty. 

"  2. — It  is  also  decreed  that  all  churches  and  churchyards,  monks  and 
nuns  as  well  as  females,  jiilgrims  and  merchants,  with  their  servants,  oxen 
and  horses  at  plough,  and  men  driving  carts,  or  harrowing,  and  horses 
harrowing,  and  men  flying  for  refuge  to  carts,  and  all  the  lands  of  the 
saints  and  the  money  of  the  clergy  shall  be  forever  unmolested,  so  that  no 
one  shall  presume  to  assault,  take,  rob  or  injure  them  in  any  manner  or 
at  any  time  whatever. 

"  3. — It  is  also  decreed  that  all  persons,  from  the  age  of  twelve  years 
and  upwards,  shall  swear  to  observe  faithfully  this  institution  of  the  truce 
of  God  as  it  is  here  appointed,  by  the  oath  following:  You  N.  hear  this: 
I  swear  that  henceforth  I  will  faithfully  observe  this  appointment  of  the 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      245 

Now  remembering  that  from  the  year  1041,  Odilo  of 
Clug^ny,  with  the  others,  was  much  interested  in  pro- 
moting the  observance  of  the  Truce  of  God,  and  so  cur- 
tailing the  license  of  the  military  power,  and  that  we 
have  documents  which  show  that  he  was  recommend- 
ing it  in  Italy,  as  well  as  in  France,  I  think,  as  I  said, 
that  this  movement  influenced  Hildebrand's  theory  of 
the  Papacy,  and  gave  him  the  idea  of  subjecting  the 
military  power  altogether  to  the  Church.  In  fact  it  is 
not  improbable  that  ideas  of  a  reformation  of  the  Pa- 
pacy on  the  Hildebrandine  lines  had  begun  to  form 
themselves  in  the  monasteries,  before  Henry  III.  took 
the  matter  in  hand,  and  that  Gregory  VI.  was  put  for- 
warc  in  that  interest.  A  recent  and  voluminous  biogra- 
phe  of  Hildebrand  has  the  theory  that  Gregory  VI. 
was  used  as  an  instrument  by  the  association  formed  by 
William  of  Aquitaine,  above  mentioned,  with  which 
Odilo  was  connected,  and  was  supplied  by  them  with 
the  funds  to  buy  off  Benedict  IX.*  I  confess  that  in 
view  of  all  the  circumstances  this  looks  to  me  very 
likely.  Certain  it  is  that  the  monastic  party  took  great 
interest  in  Gregory  VI.,  and  that  Hildebrand,  after 
being  a  monk  at  Clugny,  became  chaplain  to  Gregory, 

truce  of  God  as  it  is  here  expressed,  and  will  aid  my  bishop  or  archdeacon 
against  all  persons  who  shall  neglect  to  take  this  oath  or  fail  to  observe 
this  decree  :  so  that  if  I  am  summoned  by  them  against  the  offenders,  1 
will  neither  abscond  nor  conceal  myself,  but  will  attend  them  armed,  and 
support  them  in  all  things  to  the  utmost  of  my  power,  in  good  faith,  with- 
out subterfuge  and  according  to  my  conscience." 

*See  Robertson  Ch.  History,  Vol.  II.  (8vo),  p.  445  margin,  note  S. 


246     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


and  adhered  to  him  till  his  death  ;  and  it  is  not  impos- 
sible that  he  had  been  sent  to  Rome  to  guide  his  sim- 
plicity. When  we  remember  the  part  that  the  charge 
of  simony  played  in  the  policy  of  Hildebrand,  as  a 
weapon  of  offence  against  the  clergy  of  the  national 
Churches,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  he  could  have  attached 
himself  so  firmly  to  Gregory  VI.,  who  notoriously 
bought  the  Papacy,  unless  there  had  been  some  con- 
nection of  that  sort.  But  Hildebrand,  being  a  profound 
politician,  was  not  over  scrupulous  in  availing  himself 
of  the  means  to  carry  out  his  -iesigns. 

The  moral  regeneration  of  the  Papacy  is  not  to  be 
credited  to  Hildebrand.  The  credit  of  it  belongs  right- 
ly to  the  Emperor  Henry  HI.,  who  in  the  year  1046 
deposed  both  Benedict  IX.  and  Gregory  VI.,  and  put 
Clement  II.  in  their  place.  Henry  was  a  deeply  relig- 
ious and  conscientious  man,  honestly  determined  to 
root  out  simony  from  the  Church,  and  using  his  power 
to  promote  the  best  men  he  could  find  to  the  ecclesi- 
astical dignities  of  the  Empire.  When  he  went  to  Rome 
after  the  deposition  of  Gregory,  and  inquired  who  among 
the  Roman  clergy  was  fit  to  be  Pope,  he  was  answered, 
"not  one."  He  therefore  advanced  Suidger,  Bishop  of 
Bamberg,  to  the  Papal  chair.  Between  Gregory  VI. 
and  Gregory  VII.,  seven  Popes  intervened,  six  of  whom 
were  Germans.  The  seventh  was  a  Lombard,  and  so 
the  Papacy  returned  to  Italy.  The  first  of  these  Popes, 
Clement  II.  (^Suidger),  died  in  about  a  year  ;  the  second, 
Damasus  II.,  a  few  days  after  his  election.     The  third, 


From  Co7istantine  to  the  Reformation.      247 

Leo  IX.,  reigned  seven  years,  and  with  him  the  Hilde- 
brandine  period  properly  begins. 

Bruno,  Bishop  of  Toul,  who  became  Pope  as  Leo  IX., 
was  a  man  of  noble  birth,  of  liberal  culture,  and  of 
fervent  piety,  and  was  chosen  by  Henry  for  these 
reasons.  On  his  way  to  Rome,  it  is  said,  he  was  met 
at  Besancon  by  the  abbot  of  Clugny,  in  company  with 
Hildebrand,  who  persuaded  him  to  lay  aside  the  charac- 
ter of  Pope-elect,  and  to  appear  in  Rome  as  a  pilgrim, 
taking  his  right  to  the  Papacy  from  the  election  of  the 
Roman  Church,  and  not  from  the  imperial  nomination. 
Hildebrand  now  returned  to  Rome,  and  entered  again 
into  the  service  of  the  Pope.  Leo  magnified  his  office 
by  making  journeys  into  Germany  and  France,  and 
holding  councils  against  simony  and  the  "concubinage" 
of  the  clergy,  and  conferring  privileges  and  immunities 
upon  the  influential  monasteries.  At  his  death  the 
foundation  was  laid  for  the  Hildebrandine  superstruct- 
ure. He  was  succeeded  by  Gebhard,  Bishop  of  Eich- 
stedt,  who  was  nominated  by  the  Emperor  at  the 
suggestion  of  Hildebrand,  taking  the  name  of  Victor  II. 
He  introduced  the  practice  of  sending  legates  to  hold 
councils  in  the  various  countries.  Then  Frederick  of 
Lorraine  became  Pope  as  Stephen  IX.  After  him  came 
Gerard,  Bishop  of  Florence,  who  was  a  Burgundian  by 
birth,  as  Nicholas  II.  Then  Anselm  of  Lucca  was 
elected  Pope  as  Alexander  II.  And  then  Hildebrand 
(1073)  ascended  the  Papal  throne  as  Gregory  VII. 
What  is  to  be  noted   is,  that  these  Germans  of  high 


248    Christendo7ii  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

moral  and  religious  character,  although,  when  advanced 
to  the  Papacy,  they  adopted  the  Hildcbrandine  prin- 
ciples, were  the  product  of  the  German  Church  ;  they 
had  been  trained  in  it,  and  not  in  the  school  of  the 
Papacy ;  they  arc  therefore  evidences  of  the  spiritual 
life  that  was  in  the  German  Church  while  the  Papacy 
was  sunk  so  low.  The  Cluniac  influence,  again,  was 
German  or  French  ;  and  it  was  this  new  infusion  of 
blood  from  the  north  of  the  Alps,  which  started  the 
Papacy  on  its  way  to  the  supremacy  it  attained  in  the 
twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries. 

The  political  event  which  accrued  most  to  the  benefit 
of  the  see  of  Rome  at  this  time  was  the  establishment 
of  the  Normans  in  southern  Italy.  From  the  time  that 
Rollo  became  the  "man"  of  Charles  the  Simple,  and 
received  the  investiture  of  Normandy,  the  Normans  had 
made  rapid  progress  in  the  civilization  of  the  age,  and 
by  this  time  had  developed  into  the  most  hardy,  war- 
like, astute  and  unscrupulous  race  in  Europe.  The 
Duchy  of  Normandy  was  the  most  powerful  and  pros- 
perous fief  of  the  French  Kingdom.  In  the  early  part 
of  the  eleventh  century  some  Norman  pilgrims  found 
their  way  into  southern  Italy.  Being  asked  to  take 
part  in  a  petty  war  between  a  lord  and  his  vassals  they 
engaged  some  of  their  countrymen  to  join  them  ;  others 
followed,  and  by  the  time  of  Leo  IX.  they  had  made 
themselves  masters  of  so  much  territory  that  Leo,  after 
losing  a  battle  against  them  and  being  taken  prisoner, 
granted  them  investiture  of  Apulia  and  Calabria.      As 


Front  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     249 

the  monks  were  the  ecclesiastical  army  of  the  Papacy, 
so  these  Normans  became  its  military  allies.  The 
territory  in  the  south  of  Italy  which  they  acquired  was 
won  from  the  Greek  Empire  and  the  Saracens,  but  Leo 
claimed  the  sovereignty  over  it  by  virtue  of  the  forged 
donation  of  Constantine,  and  the  Normans  cared  little 
whose  it  was,  so  long  as  they  had  a  plausible  title  and 
the  power  to  make  it  respected.  They  readily,  there- 
fore, became  the  "men"  of  the  Papacy;  and  in  this  way 
the  Popes  obtained  an  army  to  put  down  the  barons  in 
the  vicinity  of  Rome,  who  had  tyrannized  over  their 
predecessors,  and  upon  which  they  could  count  in  any 
future  contest  with  the  Emperor.  Their  Norman  vas- 
sals, however,  were  unruly  and  unscrupulous  allies,  who 
consulted  their  own  interests  in  affording  help  to  the 
Popes,  and  were  a  very  uncertain  dependence  in  an 
exigency  in  which  there  was  nothing  to  be  gained  for 
themselves.  The  dependence  of  the  Popes  upon  these 
Italian  Normans  was  doubtless  a  strong  inducement  to 
Alexander  II.  and  Gregory  VII.  to  be  complaisant  to 
the  French  Norman,  William  the  Conqueror,  in  abet- 
ting his  usurpation  of  the  English  crown. 

With  these  powers  at  his  back,  and  with  a  high  sense 
of  the  supreme  authority  of  the  see  of  St.  Peter  over  all 
other  earthly  powers,  spiritual  and  temporal,  the  monk 
Hildebrand,  first  as  a  servant  of  the  Papacy,  and  then 
as  Pope  himself,  set  himself  with  a  vigor,  a  persistency, 
an  ability  and  a  pitilessness  almost  unexampled,  to 
reduce  the  Church  and  the  world  to  the  Papal  obedi- 


250     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

cnce.  The  narrative  of  events  may  be  read  in  any  of 
the  histories,  and  it  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  summa- 
rize it.  The  Hne  of  Hildebrandine  Popes  lasted  ,as  I 
said,  from  Leo  IX,  (acceded  1048)  to  Boniface  VIII. 
(died  1303),  a  period  of  two  centuries  and  a  half.  It 
includes,  besides  Leo  IX.,  Alexander  II.  and  Gregory 
VII.,  Urban  II.,  the  organizer  of  the  first  Crusade; 
Paschal  II.,  who  offered  to  renounce  all  the  temporal 
estates  of  the  Church,  rather  than  permit  homage  to 
the  sovereign  ;  Calixtus  II.,  who  brought  the  contest 
about  investitures  to  a  close  by  a  reasonable  compro- 
mise ;  Innocent  II.  and  Eugenius  III.,  the  friends  of 
St.  Bernard,  the  latter  the  organizer  of  the  second 
Crusade  ;  Hadrian  IV.,  the  only  Englishman  who 
became  Pope,  who  gave  Ireland  to  Henry  II.  of 
England  ;  Alexander  III.,  who  compelled  Henry  to  do 
penance  at  the  shrine  of  Thomas  a  Becket,  and  who 
triumphed  over  Frederick  Barbarossa  ;  Innocent  III., 
who  received  the  homage  of  the  base  King  John  of 
England,  who  compelled  Philip  Augustus  of  France  to 
submit  to  his  sentence,  and  who  promoted  the  Albigen- 
sian  crusades  ;  and  Gregory  IX.  and  Innocent  IV.,  the 
implacable  adversaries  of  the  Emperor  Frederick  II. 

The  great  typical  event  and  picture  of  the  period  is 
Henry  IV.,  Emperor  of  Germany,  standing  barefoot  in 
the  snow  before  the  closed  doors  of  Gregory's 
apartments  in  the  castle  of  Canossa,  praying  for 
release  from  his  excommunication.  The  great  P^mper- 
or  Henry  III.  was  too  powerful  for  Ilildebrand  to  a-ttack 


From  Constantiiie  to  the  Reformation.      2  5  r 

him  openly ;  but  when  he  left  his  crown  and  sceptre  to 
the  young  child  who  became  Henry  IV,,  and  that  young 
child,  under  unfaithful  tutorship  grew  up  to  be  a 
pleasure-loving,  headstrong  and  wayward  youth,  bur- 
dened with  the  responsibilities  of  the  Empire  before 
maturity,  experience  and  misfortune  developed  the 
strength  of  character  which  showed  itself  in  his  later 
years,  Gregory's  time  came,  and  he  assumed  the  Papacy 
himself.  It  was  very  easy  to  foment  dissatisfaction 
among  a  turbulent  and  rapacious  nobility,  eager  to 
throw  off  the  imperial  yoke,  at  the  mistakes  of  the 
young  king,  who  had  not  strength  to  keep  them  in 
order,  and  whose  private  life  was  sinful  enough  to 
expose  him  to  the  censure  of  the  Church.  When  Greg- 
ory thundered  his  excommunication  against  Henry,  and 
absolved  his  subjects  from  their  allegiance,  he  invited 
the  rebellion  of  every  discontented  element,  he  con- 
sciously threw  the  Empire  into  greater  disorder,  and  he 
intentionally  weakened  the  central  authority,  the  sup- 
port and  strengthening  of  which  was  the  prime  necessi- 
ty of  the  time  for  the  progress  of  society.  It  was  an 
easy  victory  of  the  stern,  relentless,  ecclesiastical 
politician  over  a  king  whose  advisers  were  treacher- 
ous and  whose  character  was  as  yet  unformed.  Henry 
was  excommunicated;  his  subjects  rebelled;  they  were 
successful  against  him  and  declared  him  deposed  unless 
his  excommunication  were  removed  within  the  year. 
And  therefore  Henry  went  to  Canossa. 


252     ChrJste7tdo77i  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Let  us  do  justice  to  Hildebrand's  motives.  The 
magnificent  idea  of  the  imperial  prerogative,  as  the  vice- 
gerency  of  Christ  in  the  rule  of  the  world — the  idea 
acted  upon  by  Charlemagne,  and  formulated  anew  by 
Frederick  Barbarossa  at  a  later  period,  the  idea  which 
took  hold  of  the  soul  of  Dante,  and  made  him  the  stern 
Ghibelline  he  was — that  idea  had  utterly  broken  down 
in  practice  by  the  time  of  Hildebrand.  Instead  of  there 
being  one  Emperor,  "lord  of  the  world,"  the  superior 
of  all  other  powers,  and  so  the  representative  of  the 
divine  dominion  upon  earth,  there  had  been  two 
Emperors,  one  at  Constantinople,  and  one  in  Germany, 
and  numerous  kings  entirely  independent  of  either  of 
them.  If,  therefore,  there  was  to  be  one  ruler,  he  must 
be  the  spiritual  and  not  the  temporal  head  of  Church 
and  State.  The  False  Decretals,  again,  which  were 
accepted  as  authentic  canon  law  in  all  the  monastic 
schools,  whatever  else  they  had  done,  had  robbed  the 
temporal  government  of  that  sacredness  with  which 
the  mind  of  Charlemagne  had  invested  it,  and  prepared 
the  way  for  the  usurpation  of  the  spiritual  power  as 
residing  in  the  Pope.  And  as  the  secular  government 
lost  its  sacredness,  there  was  danger  under  the  existing 
system — in  the  intimate  union  of  Church  and  State,  in 
the  subordination  of  the  Church  to  the  State,  and 
the  double  character  of  the  hierarchy  as  lords  temporal 
as  well  as  lords  spiritual — that  the  spiritual  vitality  of 
the  Church  might  be  stifled,  and  Christendom  become 
altogether  worldly.     There  was  danger,  that  is,  so  far 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     253 

as  man  was  concerned.  Let  us  concede  that  Hilde- 
brand  saw  this  danger,  and  resolved  to  do  his  utmost  to 
avert  it.  It  did  not  occur  to  him  that  if  the  spirit- 
ual potentate  assumed  the  supreme  temporal  gov- 
ernment, and  administered  it  by  means  of  his  spirit- 
ual vassals  the  hierarchy  of  the  Church,  the  same 
secularizing  influence  as  before  would  be  at  work  upon 
them,  and  perhaps  with  worse  results.  Let  us  admit 
that  he  thoroughly  believed  in  his  own  theory  of  the 
Papal  supremacy.  It  was  natural  for  those  who  be- 
lieved in  the  special  grace  of  the  see  of  St.  Peter,  to 
attribute  its  degradation  in  the  preceding  age  to  its 
subjection  to  the  secular  power  (that  power  being  the 
brigand  Counts  of  Tusculum),  to  forget  that  that 
degradation  was  clearly  due  to  the  want  of  the  supreme 
secular  power,  the  Empire,  working  in  its  own  sphere, 
and  to  suppose  that  the  normal  action  of  the  Papacy 
required  an  inversion  of  the  previous  order.  As  the 
feudal  system  with  its  graded  ranks  and  subordinations 
developed  itself,  and  it  became  more  and  more  plain 
that  the  Emperor  was  not  the  feudal  superior  of  all 
men,  it  was  easy  to  dream  of  the  supremacy  of  the 
spiritual  over  the  temporal  power — under  a  different 
system,  New  England  Congregational  pastors  have  had 
the  same  dream.  The  mind  of  Gregory  VII.  took  in 
the  idea  in  all  its  vastness.  He  saw  the  Bishop  of 
Rome  at  the  summit  of  the  ascending  grades  of 
temporal  lordships,  as  well  as  of  the  ecclesiastical 
hierarchy.     The  vicegerent  of  Christ  upon  earth  must, 


254     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

if  he  be  free  and  supreme,  be  endowed  witli  ijrace  to 
discharge  the  immense  responsibility;  that  he  had  not 
discharged  it  in  the  past  was  due  to  the  fact  that  he 
was  not  free,  and  was  not  supreme.  That  was  the 
theory,  and  Hildebrand  would  make  it  fact.  The 
Hildebrandine  movement,  therefore,  was  intended  as  a 
reformation  ;  and  we  may  admit  with  justice  that  those 
who  worked  upon  that  theory  desired  to  reform  the 
Church,  and  sought  to  accumulate  power  in  their  hands 
that  they  might  reform  it. 

But,  admitting  this,  it  is  for  us  to  read  the  history  of 
these  times  by  the  light  of  the  ages  that  followed. 
The  theory  of  the  Hildebrandine  reform  was  not  that 
of  the  primitive  constitution  of  the  Church  ;  and  there- 
fore the  reformation  was  not  permanent ;  it  was  a 
failure  almost  from  the  beginning,  and,  as  time  went 
on,  a  corruption  infecting  the  whole  Church.  The 
Papacy  was  compelled,  from  its  entrance  on  this  phase 
of  its  existence,  to  make  use  of  force  and  diplo- 
macy, and  to  depend  upon  them  rather  than  upon 
ascertained  and  admitted  right  ;  it  was  therefore 
tainted  with  sinister  methods,  and  these  methods 
reacted  upon  the  men  who  used  them — lowered  their 
moral  tone,  so  that  when  the  power  was  gained,  the 
men  were  not  worthy  to  wield  it.  It  is  a  great  mistake 
to  attribute  the  progress  of  Europe,  from  the  twelfth 
century  on,  to  the  influence  of  the  Papacy.  It  is  a 
great  mistake  to  lump  the  Churches  of  the  Middle  Ages 
under  the  one  title  of  the  Roman  Catholic,  or  Romish 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      255 

Church.  The  Romish  Church  is  almost  the  newest  of 
the  sects  of  Christendom  ;  it  dates  from  the  Council  of 
Trent.  The  Churches  of  the  nations  were,  it  is  true, 
in  communion  with  the  see  of  Rome,  and  in  the  Roman 
obedience  ;  but  they  were  the  national  Churches  still, 
and  they  had  their  part  as  national  Churches  in  the 
movements  of  the  times. 

And  if  we  do  justice  to  Hildebrand  and  his  associates, 
let  us  do  justice  also  to  the  clergy  of  these  national 
Churches.  They  were  not  the  corrupt  and  unclean 
wretches  which  modern  Protestantism,  wrongly  read- 
ing the  Hildebrandine  manifestoes  against  them, 
declares  them  to  have  been.  The  purposes  of  Hilde- 
brand required  him  to  accuse  the  clergy  of  grievous 
sins,  that  he  might  put  them  at  a  disadvantage  in 
resisting  the  denationalization  of  the  Churches.  But 
when  a  charge  of  moral  corruption  is  brought  against 
the  established  order  by  a  revolutionist  or  reformer, 
we  need  to  ask  what  is  his  object  ;  we  also  need  to  ask 
what  is  his  standard  of  judgment — what  the  terms  he  uses 
actually  mean  in  this  relation — what  are  the  facts  which 
they  represent.  Now  the  programme  of  Gregory  VII. 
was  a  political  programme.  It  proposed  to  reduce  the 
State  as  well  as  the  Church  to  absolute  subjection  to 
the  Papacy — to  make  the  Pope  supreme  lord  of  every 
earthly  power,  as  well  as  the  fountain  of  all  ecclesi- 
astical jurisdiction.  And  this  has  been  the  claim  of  all 
his    successors — a   claim  which  has  never  been  aban-  y 

doned.     Innocent  III.  declared  that  God  had  ordained 


256     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

the  Pope,  as  Christ's  vicar,  "to  have  power  over  all 
nations  and  kingdoms,  to  root  out  and  to  pull  down,  and 
todestroy,  and  to  throw  down,  and  to  build  and  to  plant," 
appropriating  to  the  Papacy  the  text  in  the  first  chap- 
ter of  Jeremiah.  "We  declare,  affirm,  define  and  pro- 
nounce," said  Boniface  VIII.,  the  last  of  the  Hildebran- 
dinc  Popes,  in  the  famous  bull,  "Unam  Saiictam^  "that 
it  is  altogether  necessary  for  salvation,  that  every 
V     human  creature  be  subject  to  the  Roman  pontiff"." 

To  obtain  that  power  was  the  object  of  the  Hilde- 
brandine  revolution.  The  attack  was  made  upon  three 
lines,  and  directed  : 

First,  to  withdraw  the  ecclesiastics  of  the  national 
Churches  from  all  social  sympathies,  from  all  allegiance 
to  the  nation  and  interest  in  the  national  life — to 
denationalize  them,  and  bind  them,  as  the  Jesuits 
are  bound  to-day,  only  to  the  Church  and  to  the 
Papacy. 

Secondly,  to  take  the  estates  of  the  Church  virtually 
out  of  the  nation,  by  releasing  them  from  all  contribu- 
tions to  the  national  treasury,  and  by  freeing  their 
holders  from  the  obligations  to  which  the  holders  of 
fiefs  were  bound  as  vassals  of  the  sovereign. 

And  thirdly,  to  weaken  the  temporal  governments, 
so  that  the  internal  order  and  external  security  of  the 
nations  should  be  dependent  upon  the  will  ol  the  pon- 
tiff", and  he  should  be  able  to  use  rebellion  or  war  as 
the   means   of  coercing   a  monarch  whose  obedience 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformatio?!.      257 

was  halting,  or  whose  sins,  real  or  imputed,  called  for 
the  censure  of  the  pontiff. 

The  instruments  upon  which  Gregory  relied  to  ac- 
complish the  denationalization  of  the  clergy  and  their 
estates  were  the  charges  of  simony  and  concubinage 
which  make  so  great  a  figure  in  the  councils  of  this 
period.  Now  as  these  charges  are  the  foundation  of 
the  allegation,  made  by  modern  Protestant  and  secular 
historians  and  controversialists,  that  the  clergy  were 
morally  corrupt  and  depraved  at  this  time,  I  must  ask 
your  indulgence  in  speaking  of  them  at  greater  length 
than  seems  proportionate  to  the  scale  of  these  lectures. 
I  think  I  have  shown  you  evidences  of  spiritual  vitality 
in  the  national  Churches  when  the  Papacy  itself  was 
under  a  cloud,  and  that  that  vitality  infused  new  life 
into  the  see  of  Rome.  Now  the  real  religious  earnest- 
ness of  the  priests  and  people,  as  well  as  of  the  rulers 
of  the  nations,  while  it  is  consistent  with  a  great  deal  of 
superstition,  with  a  great  deal  of  moral  inconsistency 
and  instability,  is  not  consistent  with  conscious,  wilful, 
persistent  immorality  on  the  part  of  the  spiritual  guides 
of  the  nation  and  the  people.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
charge  of  moral  corruption  made  by  the  reformer  or 
revolutionist  is  apt  to  be  colored  by  his  prejudices,  and 
is  viewed  from  his  stand-point.  We  need,  therefore,  to 
ask,  as  I  said,  what  the  terms  used  actually  mean,  and 
what  are  the  facts  which  they  represent. 

I  assert  then,  that  the  modern  writer  who  makes  this 
charge  against  the  clergy  of  this  age,  though  he  may 


258     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

quote  his  authorities  with  exactness,  though  he  will  find 
it  in  the  conten\porary  documents  repeated  again  and 
again,  may  be  entirely  mistaken  in  understanding  it. 
For  what  is  the  fact  ?  Those  who  were  engaged  in 
this  crusade  of  the  Papacy  against  the  national  Churches 
and  the  clergy,  simply  took  the  monastic  view  of  cleri- 
cal marriage,  and  branded  the  married  clergymen — 
would  brand  those  of  us  who  to-day  are  living  in  the 
holy  estate  of  matrimony — with  the  opprobrious  epithet 
of  concubinary  priests.  I  am  aware  that  it  is  supposed 
to  have  been  the  law  of  the  Church,  throughout  the 
West,  as  it  was  not  in  the  Greek  Church,  that  the  clergy 
should  not  marry ;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  this  age 
public  opinion  held  these  canons,  if  there  were  any 
such,  in  abeyance,  and  accepted  clerical  marriage  as  a 
general  and  lawful  fact,  where  the  clergy  were  not 
monks.  The  public  opinion  on  this  matter  cannot  be 
better  illustrated  than  by  the  story,  as  the  good  monk 
Ordericus  Vitalis  tells  it,  of  the  treatment  of  the  canons 
of  Rouen  Cathedral  by  their  bishop,  after  the  Council 
of  Rheims  in  11 19,  and  his  evident  sympathy,  though 
he  was  a  monk,  with  the  married  clergy.  The  arch- 
bishop, provoked  at  the  reception  which  the  decree  of 
separation  met  with,  sent  in  his  retainers  to  drive  the 
clergy  out  of  the  Cathedral,  and  I  want  to  read  you  a 
sentence  or  two  from  Ordericus'  narrative  of  the  affair  : 
"Then  Hugh  of  Longueville  and  Ansquetil  of  Cropus, 
and  some  other  ecclesiastics  of  advanced  age  and  great 
piety  happened  to  be  in  the  Church  [while  the  tumult 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     259 

was  going  on],  conversing  together  on  confession  and^ 
other  profitable  subjects,  or  reciting,  as  was  their  duty, 
the  service  of  the  hours  to  the  praise  of  God.  The 
archbishop's  domestics  were  mad  enough  to  fall  on 
these  priests,  and  treated  them  shamefully,  and  so  out- 
rageously that  they  hardly  restrained  themselves  from 
taking  their  lives,  though  they  asked  for  mercy  on  their 
bended  knees.  These  old  priests,  being  at  length  dis- 
missed, made  their  escape  from  the  city  as  soon  as  they 
could,  together  with  their  friends  who  had  before  fled, 
without  stopping  to  receive  the  bishop's  license  and 
benediction.  They  carried  the  sorrowful  tidings  to 
their  parishioners  and" — Ordericus  says  "concubines," 
I  take  the  liberty  to  read  wives  —  "  and  to  prove  the 
truth  of  these  reports  exhibited  the  wounds  and  livid 
bruises  on  their  persons.  The  archdeacons  and  canons 
and  all  quiet  citizens  were  afflicted  at  this  cruel 
onslaught,  and  compassionated  with  the  servants  of 
God,  who  had  suffered  such  unheard  of  insults,"*  etc. 
It  is  the  tone  of  this  passage,  remembering  that  it  was 
written  by  a  monk,  that  I  think  remarkable.  It  is 
evident  that  neither  he,  nor  the  archdeacons,  nor  the 
citizens,  nor  the  parishioners,  thought  the  clergy  who 
were  thus  shamefully  treated  to  be  the  immoral,  licen- 
tious men,  that  the  readers  of  Gregory's  decrees  or 
Peter  Damiani's  diatribes  would  infer,  if  they  took  them 
literally.      Take   Robertson's   account  of  the  married 

*  Ordericus  Vitalis,  IV.,  29.     Bohn's  Ed. 


26o    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

,clergy  of  Milan,*  whose  excellence  is  vouched  for  in  a 
proverb  of  the  time,  and  of  their  persecution  by  Lan- 
dulph,  Ariald,  Herleinbald  and  the  others,  as  the 
evidence  of  the  spirit  of  these  charges  and  of  those  who 
made  them ;  and  again,  consider  Lanfranc's  refusal  to 
promulgate  Gregory's  decree  of  1076  against  the  English 
parish  priests,  and  other  facts  of  this  character ;  f  and 
the  conclusion  is  that  the  great  bulk  of  the  clergy  were 
not  amenable  to  the  charge  as  it  is  generally  under- 
stood. 

Why  then  were  Gregory  and  his  successors  so  deter- 
mined to  make  the  rule  of  celibacy  for  the  clergy 
universal  ?  Not  merely  because  they  viewed  the 
relation  of  the  sexes  from  the  purely  monastic  stand- 
point. Hildebrand  was  not  a  fanatical  reformer  of  the 
school  of  Peter  Damiani,  though  he  used  Peter  as  his 
tool,  and  though  the  monastic  orders,  with  their  repu- 
tation for  sanctity  and  their  immense  influence,  were 
his  great  reliance  in  the  war  upon  clerical  marriage. 
The  reason  was,  that  the  married  clergy  as  a  class 
were  the  most  interested  in  preserving  the  relation  of 
the  Church  to  the  nation  as  a  national  Church.  Pro- 
fessor (now  Bishop)  Stubbs,  in  his  little  work  on  the 
early  Plantagenets,  points  out  that  there  were  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  as  in  other  times,  three  classes  of  the 
clergy :  those  whom  the  kings  employed  in  the  busi- 

*  Robertson's  Church  History,  B.  V.,  Ch.  I.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  sgg.octavoed. 
\  See  the  long  note  in  Gieseler,  Div.  III.,  Ch.  IT.,  Sec.  65,  note  4.    Vol. 
II.  of  Harper's  Edition,  p.  395. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      261 

ness  of  the  State  ;  those  who  were  above  all  things 
Churchmen,  among  whom  would  be  found  at  this  time, 
the  staunchest  adherents  of  the  see  of  Rome  ;  and  those 
who  were  real  saints,  like  Anselm.  Of  the  first  class, 
he  speaks  thus:  "The  kings,"  he  says,  "had  taken 
prelates  to  be  their  ministers,  and  had  promoted  their 
ministers  to  be  prelates.  Bishop  Roger,  of  Salisbury,* 
[for  example]  was  not  only  a  powerful  ecclesiastic,  but 
the  royal  justiciar,  the  head  of  all  the  courts,  and  the 
treasurer  of  all  the  money  of  the  king.  Under  him 
was  a  set  of  clerks,  who  would  set  the  fashion  for  one 
school  of  the  clergy,  secular  in  mind  and  aim  and 
manners  ;  often  married  men,  so  far  as  their  right  to 
marry  can  be  accounted  valid,  canons  of  cathedrals, 
where  they  provided  for  their  children  and  made 
estates  for  themselves  ;  worthy  men,  most  of  them,  the 
predecessors  of  the  clerical  magistrates  of  this  day,  far 
greater  in  quarter  sessions  and  county  meetings  than 
in  convocation  and  missionary  work."t  Now  these 
may  not  have  been  the  highest  type  of  clergy — I  am 
not  concerned  to  argue  that  they  were  ;  but  I  do  deny 
that  they  were  the  immoral,  irreligious  men,  which 
the  popular  Protestant  reading  of  this  period  of  history 
assumes  them  to  be.  In  a  Church  organized  as  the 
"one  body"  of  which  St.  Paul  speaks,  in  which  "the 
eye  cannot  say  to  the  hand,  I  have  no  need  of  thee, 
nor  again,  the  head  to  the  feet,  I  have  no  need  of  you," 

*  In  the  reign  of  King  Stephen,  about  1 140. 
f  Stubbs,  Early  Plantagenets,  p.  64. 


262     C}i7n'stendo7n  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

these  men  were  useful  and  valuable  members  ;  and  it  is 
an  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  an  abnormal  situa- 
tion may  work  good  under  peculiar  circumstances,  that 
the  national  life  was  assisted  in  its  resistance  to  the 
Papal  usurpations  by  a  class  of  clergy  like  these,  whose 
usefulness  and  merit  is  not  to  be  measured  by  the 
purely  ecclesiastical  standard. 

From  the  time  of  Charlemagne,  when  the  clergy 
were  almost  the  only  persons  to  whom  the  use  of  the 
pen  was  easy,  it  had  been  the  custom  to  employ  the 
king's  chaplains  and  the  clerks  of  his  household  in 
those  offices  of  the  government  which  required  accounts 
and  records  to  be  kept,  and  laws  enrolled  and  tran- 
scribed. These  clerks,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  though 
they  were  thus  employed  in  secular  business,  were  kept 
to  their  clerical  character  by  the  rule  of  their  order 
requiring  them  to  say  their  office  daily,  and  to  attend 
daily  the  services  of  the  Church.  Now  it  was  natural, 
when  an  able  and  trusty  man  had  earned  his  promotion 
by  fidelity  and  ability  in  this  service,  and  was  allowed 
to  retire  from  it,  or  was  seen  to  be  worthy  of  a  higher 
place,  that  he  should  be  given  an  ecclesiastical  prefer- 
ment more  suitable  to  his  clerical  calling  ;  and  there 
was  this  advantage  in  it,  that  having  been  occupied 
with  the  laws  of  the  realm  and  the  affairs  of  the  gov- 
ernment, he  would  take  with  him  into  his  new  station, 
the  results  of  that  training  in  the  national  laws,  tradi- 
tions and  customs,  which  made  him  loyal  to  the 
national   life.     The  advantage  would  be  the  same  as 


From  Constafitine  to  the  Reformation.      26 


J 


when,  at  the  present  day,  a  man  who  has  been  bred  to 
the  law,  feels  himself  called  upon  to  take  Holy  Orders  ; 
his  legal  training  is  a  help,  not  only  to  himself,  but  to 
the  diocese  of  which  he  is  a  member.  In  this  way  there 
was  raised  up  in  the  Church  a  national  party  which  was, 
by  habit,  by  inclination,  and  by  education,  able  to  sus- 
tain the  national  side  in  the  disputes  with  the  Papacy 
when  they  arose.  Little  as  they  might  be  accounted 
of  by  the  stricter  Churchmen  of  the  day,  from  their 
more  secular  habits  of  life,  they  were  of  great  use  to 
the  nation  and  the  national  Church  ;  and  therefore  it 
was  that  Hildebrand  tried  to  crush  them  out  by  his 
double  charge  against  them  of  simony  and  concubinage. 
And  even  if  the  married  clergyman  had  not  been  thus 
closely  connected  with  the  court,  there  was  the  same 
motive  for  putting  him  down.  Lord  Bacon  somewhere 
remarks  that  "he  who  hath  a  wife  and  children  hath 
given  hostages  unto  fortune."  The  man  who  has  a 
family  is  interested,  not  only  in  his  own  material  wel- 
fare, and  in  the  support  of  his  family,  but  in  the  good 
order  of  society,  in  the  well-being  of  his  country,  in  all 
those  interests  which  secure  stability  for  the  future,  as 
well  as  peace  in  the  present.  He  desires  that  his 
children  shall  live  after  him,  and  that  they  shall  enjoy 
such  prosperity  as  may  come  to  them,  in  the  order  of 
Divine  Providence,  through  the  laws  of  society  pre- 
serving to  them  the  material  results  of  their  energy, 
intelligence  and  industry.  He  endeavors  to  take 
security  for  their  welfare  by  such  provision  as  he  him^ 


264     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

self  can  make  for  them  ;  and  with  this  in  view,  if  he  be 
a  wise  and  thoughtful  man,  he  acts  in  the  political 
sphere  with  a  wise  conservatism,  endeavoring  to  keep 
the  course  of  affairs  in  its  natural  channel  ;  he  is 
patriotic  by  instinct  and  forethought  both  ;  he  is 
devoted  to  his  country,  because  it  is  the  defender  and 
safeguard  of  his  hearth  and  home.  Now  this  was 
precisely  what  Hildebrand  did  not  want  the  priest  of 
the  Church  to  be.  He  desired  to  break  all  these  ties 
of  family  and  country  which  would  interfere  with  an 
absolute  devotion  to  the  Papacy.  The  priest  must 
have  no  secular  interests  but  those  of  the  Church  ;  he 
must  have  no  associations  but  those  of  his  own  order  ; 
the  clergy  must  be  a  body  apart  from  all  sympathies, 
affections,  duties,  except  those  which  appertained  to 
their  profession  ;  they  must  be  united  in  solid  phalanx 
with  each  other,  and  separate  from  all  other  tics  what- 
soever. The  offence  was  that  the  Churches  of  the 
nations  were  national  Churches,  and  they  must  be  de- 
nationalized, if  they  were  to  be  subjected  to  the  Papacy, 
and  instruments  in  its  hands  to  enforce  its  decrees. 

The  second  object  of  Gregory's  policy,  therefore,  was 
to  withdraw  the  estates  and  property  of  the  Church 
from  all  obligations  to  the  secular  government.  The 
charge  of  simony  went  hand  in  hand  with  the  charge 
of  licentiousness,  and  with  the  same  motive.  It  was 
intended  to  weaken  the  national  Church  by  involving 
its  rulers  in  the  guilt  of  an  imputed  sin,  to  weaken  the 
national  government  by  breaking  the  allegiance  of  the 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     265 

clerical  subject  to  his  sovereign,  and  to  reduce  both 
Church  and  State  to  subjection  to  the  Bishop  of  Rome. 
Simony  is  the  sin  of  endeavoring-  to  purchase  the  gifts 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  for  material  considerations.  That  is 
its  technical  meaning.  But  the  imputation  of  the  guilt 
of  this  sin  at  this  time  by  the  Papal  revolutionists,  and 
its  subsequent  passing  into  the  contest  of  investitures, 
is  not  of  itself  sufficient  evidence  that  the  national 
Churches  of  Europe  were  tainted  with  it  to  the  extent 
that  the  contemporary  documents,  if  not  duly  con- 
sidered, would  imply.  Here  again  I  say,  as  I  said  about 
clerical  marriage,  the  modern  Protestant  writer  may 
quote  his  authorities  correctly,  and  yet  be  mistaken. 
Many  considerations  must  be  taken  into  account  to 
have  an  appreciative  sense  of  the  mission  and  work  of 
the  Mediaeval  Churches  and  of  their  faithfulness  to  their 
trust.  If  any  prelate  were  guilty  of  simony  in  the  real 
sense,  one  would  think  it  was  Gregory  VI.,  and  yet 
with  ostentatious  indifference  to  the  charge  in  this  case, 
Hildebrand,  by  assuming  the  title  of  Gregory  VII., 
asserted  his  legitimacy,  as  well  as  proclaimed  his  hos- 
tility to  the  Emperor  by  whom  he  had  been  deposed. 

Undoubtedly  there  was  corrupt  bargaining  for  the 
emoluments  of  sacerdotal  office  at  this  period,  and  before 
as  well  as  after ;  but  the  scope  of  the  charge,  as  made 
by  the  Hildebrandines  included  more  than  this,  and 
mixed  up  with  what  was  corrupt,  that  which  was  right 
and  lawful  and  necessary  in  those  times.  The  prelates 
of  the  Church  were  temporal  rulers  over  their  estates. 


2  66    CJiristeiidom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

as  well  as  spiritual  shepherds  of  the  flock ;  they  had 
come  into  this  responsibility,  as  I  have  shown,  through 
the  natural  changes  in  society ;  they  stood  in  this 
respect  on  the  same  footing  with  the  secular  nobles. 
To  strengthen  the  central  authority,  and  to  preserve 
order,  it  was  the  policy  as  well  as  the  piety  of  the 
Emperors,  to  balance  the  power  of  the  military  nobles 
by  interposing  among  them  the  ecclesiastical  princi- 
palities, "  to  break  the  impulse  of  aggressive  warfare, 
to  serve  as  models  of  good  order,  and  to  maintain  a 
direct  hold  in  the  imperial  hands  on  territories  which 
could  not  become  hereditary  in  a  succession  of  priests."* 
There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  people  of  the  eccle- 
siastical lordships  were  at  this  time  better  governed 
and  more  mercifully  dealt  with  than  the  inhabitants  of 
the  lay  fiefs ;  and  therefore,  however  foreign  to  our 
usage  under  changed  conditions,  may  be  this  union  of 
sacred  and  secular  authority,  it  was  at  that  time  to  the 
great  advantage  of  all  concerned.  But  this  being  so,  it 
was  of  the  greatest  importance,  not  only  to  the  Emperor 
but  to  the  Empire,  not  only  to  the  King  but  to  the 
Kingdom,  that  the  administrator  of  this  vast  trust, 
spiritual  as  well  as  temporal,  should  be  a  man  who  was 
loyal  to  the  supreme  temporal  authority,  and  one  upon 
whom  it  could  rely  as  wise  in  counsel,  energetic  in 
action,  and  well  versed  in  the  administration  of  affairs. 
In    his    temporal   character,   therefore,    as   lord   of  the 

*Stubbs,  Early  Plantagenets,  p.  7. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     267 

episcopal  or  abbatial  domains,  the  bishop  or  abbot  was 
a  feudatory  of  the  Empire  or  Kingdom,  and  as  such  must 
do  homage  for  his  fief,  must  promise  loyalty  to  his  su- 
perior, must  pledge  the  customary  aids  which  are  now 
provided  for  by  universal  taxation.     His  obligation  of 
loyalty  depending  upon  the  oath  of  allegiance,  without 
which  he  was  not  the  "  man  "  of  his  lord — his  homage 
being   necessary  to   bind  him    to  the  obligation — the 
Emperor  or  King  must  require  that  homage  and  oath  of 
allegiance  ;    and    he  must  also    exercise    that  right  of 
investiture  by  which  his  authority  over  the  fief  and  its 
holder  was  witnessed  and  kept  valid.     And   all   this 
being  so,  the  right  of  nomination  to  such  a  fief,  the 
right  of  choice  to  whom  so  great  a  trust  was  to  be 
committed,  would  naturally  be  felt  to  be  the  royal  or 
imperial  prerogative.     The  Emperor  or  King,  therefore, 
acquired  in  this  way  the  nomination  of  the  bishops  and 
great  abbots,  and  although,  as  we  have  seen,  in  earlier 
times  they  bestowed  the  fiefs  sometimes  upon  laymen 
who  performed  the  spiritual  duties  by  proxy,  yet  at  the 
time   we   are   speaking  of,  that   was   a   thing   of  the 
past,  and  ecclesiastics  who  had  their  confidence  were 
appointed.     Now  it  was  to  be  said  with  truth,  that  the 
sovereign  was  interested  to  appoint  good  men  and  able 
men,  rather  than  bad  or  weak  men,  to  high  ecclesiasti- 
cal office,  and  that  the  appointing  power  was  safer  in 
his  hands  than  in  any  other,*  for  the  reason   that   the 

*  After   the  right   of  election  had  been  secured  to  the  Chapters  by  the 
Concordat  of  Worms  "  Frederick  Barbarossa  had  probably  good  reason 


268    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

appointment  of  a  bishop  or  great  abbot  was  an  affair  of 
State  ;  it  would  not  be  made  without  advice  ;  the  King's 
counsellors  would  have  a  part  in  the  decision  ;  it  would 
be  pondered  and  considered,  and  the  effort  would  be  to 
make  a  wise  and  creditable  choice.* 

for  declaring  in  a  well-known  speech  that  the  bishops  appointed  by  the 
imperial  power  had  been  better  than  those  the  clergy  chose  for  them- 
selves."— Robertson,  III.,  21S. 

♦Take  the  following  example  from  Maitland,  Z>ar>C'  Ages,  p.  128  sq. 
The  see  of  Paderborn  became  vacant  in  1009.  Nine  years  before,  the 
city,  monastery  and  cathedral  had  bean  destroyed  by  fire,  and  the  see 
\^as  reduced  to  such  wretched  poverty,  that  it  was  difficult  to  know 
how  to  fill  the  vacancy.  "The  Emperor,  having,  however,  convened 
such  bishops  and  princes  as  attended  him  at  Geslar,  consulted  with  them 
as  to  the  appointment  of  a  bishop  wh>)  should  be  most  suited  to  the  cir- 
cumstances of  time  and  place.  After  long  deliberation,  and  canvassing 
the  merits  of  a  good  many  persons,  all  agreed  that  Meinwerc  was  the 
fittest  man.  *  *  *  xhe  Emperor  (faventibus  et  congratulantibus 
omnibus)  sent  for  the  chaplain;  and,  when  he  came,  smiling  with  his 
usual  kindness,  he  held  out  a  glove,  and  said — '  Take  this.'  Mein- 
werc, who  can  hardly  be  supposed  to  have  been  ignorant  of  what  was 
going  on,  and  who  understood  the  nature  of  the  symbol,  inquired  what 
he  was  to  take.  'The  see  of  Paderborn,'  replied  the  Emperor.  The 
chaplain,  with  all  the  freedom  of  a  kinsman  and  old  schoolfellow,  asked 
his  royal  master  how  he  could  suppose  that  he  wished  for  such  a  bishopric, 
when  he  had  property  enough  of  his  own  to  endow  a  better.  The  Em- 
peror, with  equal  frankness,  replied  that  that  was  just  the  very  thing  he 
was  thinking  of,  that  his  reason  for  selecting  him  was  that  he  might  take 
pity  on  that  desolate  Church,  and  help  it  in  its  need.  'Well  then,' 
said  Meinwerc  heartily,  '  I  will  take  it  on  these  terms.'  *  *  *  * 
'  Being  therefore,'  says  his  biographer,  '  raised  to  the  episcopal  office,  he 
constantly  watched  over  the  flock  committed  to  him;  and  fearing  lest  he 
should  incur  the  reproach  of  the  slothful  servant,  who  hid  his  lord's 
money  in  a  napkin,  he  did  nothing  remissly.  *  *  *  '  He  immediate- 
ly made  over  his  hereditary  properly  to  the  see;  and  on  the  third  day 
after  his  arrival  he  pulled  down  the  mean  beginnings  of  a  cathedral, 
which  his  predecessors  had  built  up,  and  erected  one  at  great  expense  and 
with  singular  magnificence.     His  personal  attention  to  the  work,  and  his 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     269 

At  the  same  time  there  was  this  difficulty,  that  the 
wretched  fiscal  system  of  the  Middle  Ages  left  the 
sovereign  always  without  adequate  means  to  meet  the 
expenditure  necessary  for  the  royal  state  and  the  needs 
of  the  kingdom  ;  and  therefore  there  was  the  tempta- 
tion to  make  terms  with  the  nominee  for  as  large  a 
share  of  the  revenues  of  the  ecclesiastical  domain  as 
could  be  reserved  by  the  crown.  I  do  not  understand 
the  royal  finance  of  this  period,  but  it  is  plain  that  the 
sovereign,  considering  his  needs,  was  always  poor ; 
every  fief  granted  was  so  much  taken  away  from  the 
royal  domain,  which  therefore  constantly  suffered  di- 
lapidation, while  the  estates  of  the  Church  suffered 
none  ;  the  prince,  therefore,  must  make  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal domain  assist  in  his  relief,  which  was  for  the  public 
and  national  service.  There  was,  then,  occasion  for 
the  charge  of  simony,  as  made  by  the  Hildebrandine 
party,  and  sufficient  plausibility  in  it  to  make  the  con- 
test of  investitures  a  bitter  one.  But  Gregory  and  his 
successors  not  only  mixed  up  these  two  things  which 
are  distinct,  but  they  struck  a  blow  at  the  very  life  of 
the  nations.  By  denying  the  right  of  the  sovereign  to 
require  homage  and  to  grant  investiture  of  the  tempo- 
ralities on  the  oath  of  allegiance,  subjecting  the  eccle- 
siastic thereby  to  the  performance  of  his  duties  to  the 


kindness  to  the  workmen,  made  the  building  go  on  rapidly;  and  he  did 
not  fail  to  call  upon  the  Emperor,  who  frequently  came  to  Paderborn, 
and  took  great  interest  in  its  proceedings,  for  his  full  share  of  the 
expense." 


2  yo    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

State,  they  would  have  destroyed  one-half  the  effec- 
tive force  of  the  nation,  because  the  release  of  the  lord 
implied  the  release  also  of  his  vassals.  But  that 
was  not  all.  Had  the  demand  been  complied  with,  the 
Pope  would  have  become  the  feudal  superior  of  the 
denationalized  clergy  ;  the  dues  and  service  of  which 
the  State  had  been  deprived  would  have  been  claimed 
by  him  ;  and  the  danger  of  an  ecclesiastical  crusade 
as  against  an  insubordinate  sovereign  would  have  been 
very  real.  The  sovereign,  therefore,  could  not  abandon 
this  right,  except  upon  the  terms  agreed  upon  by  Pas- 
chal II.  and  Henry  v.,  that  the  clergy  should  renounce 
all  their  temporal  possessions;  an  agreement  which  the 
clergy,  as  the  party  to  be  despoiled,  naturally  refused 
to  ratify.  The  contest  lasted  for  fifty  years,  and  was 
finally  settled  by  the  Concordat  of  Worms,  between 
Calixtus  II.  and  Henry  V.  (A.D.  1122);  the  substantial 
victory  remaining  with  the  Emperor,  who  yielded  the 
use  of  the  pastoral  ring  and  staff  as  symbols  of  investi- 
ture, but  retained  the  right  itself,  and  received  the 
homage  of  the  bishop-elect,  and  held  him  to  the  per- 
formance of  his  duties  to  the  Empire  as  well  as  to  the 
Church. 

In  endeavoring  to  secure  the  universal  celibacy  of  the 
clergy,  and  their  freedom  from  the  service  of  the  State, 
it  might  appear  that  the  Papal  party  were  actuated  by 
the  high  moral  principle  which  demanded  a  stricter 
and  more  severe  life  on  the  part  of  the  ecclesiastical 
body.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  clergy,  and  the  Popes 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     271 

themselves  were  more  engaged  in  secular  matters  than 
before.  It  could  not  be  otherwise,  when  the  third  ob- 
ject on  the  Hildebrandine  programme  was  the  sub- 
jection of  the  temporal  government  itself  to  the  Papacy 
— the  reduction  of  the  Empire  or  Kingdom  itself  to  the 
condition  of  a  fief  held  by  the  Holy  See.  That  might 
seem  to  the  zealous  Churchmen  to  be  also  for  the 
interest  of  religion  and  morality;  but  it  was  not  the 
divine  order — in  which  the  Church  and  the  State  have 
each  in  its  sphere  co-ordinate  authority,  received 
directly  from  God  ;  and  we  shall  see  in  the  next  lecture 
how  the  national  spirit  was  roused  to  prevent  it.  You 
remember  Gregory's  demand  of  William  the  Conqueror 
that  he  should  do  fealty  for  his  new  Kingdom  of  Eng- 
land, and  William's  stern  reply  :  "  I  refused  to  do 
fealty,  nor  will  I  do  it,  because  neither  have  I  promised 
it,  nor  have  my  predecessors  done  it  to  yours."  William 
was  as  great  and  strong  a  man  as  Gregory  VII.,  and 
Gregory  was  afraid  of  him,  and  let  him  take  his  own 
way.  But  if  a  sovereign  were  in  difficulties  the  Papacy 
immediately  became  aggressive.  The  doctrine  was 
now  advanced  that  the  excommunication  of  a  sovereign 
by  the  Pope  absolved  all  his  subjects  from  their  alle- 
giance— or  that  it  authorized  the  Pope  to  declare  them 
absolved  from  their  allegiance.  The  excommunicated 
sovereign  was  to  be  shunned  by  all  his  vassals,  all  his 
retainers,  all  his  servants.  They  who  remained  faith- 
ful to  him  were  held  to  be  involved  in  his  guilt  and 
liable  to  the  same  sentence.     If  he  were  contumacious, 


272      Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

it  was  the  duty  of  his  vassals  to  make  war  upon  him,  to 
dethrone  him,  to  aid  and  abet  his  enemies.*  In  other 
words,  the  instrument  on  which  the  Pope  relied  to  co- 
erce his  refractory"  son  was  treason  and  rebellio7i.  The 
effect  of  this  doctrine  was  to  make  rebellion  profitable 
if  it  succeeded,  and  without  harm  to  the  rebel  if  it  failed. 
Now  in  the  feudal  period,  when  the  chief  serious  occu- 
pation of  the  nobles  and  their  retainers  was  war — when 
they  were  purely  a  military  aristocracy,  who,  in  default 
of  a  patriotic  war,  carried  on  private  feuds  with  each 
other,  and  were  incited  thereto  by  the  hope  of  plunder, 
as  well  as  by  the  desire  for  revenge — to  add  another  to 
the  motives  for  the  appeal  to  arms  was,  in  my  poor  opin- 
ion, one  of  the  greatest  political  crimes  that  a  wise  and 
thoughtful  man  could  commit.  When  parties  took 
sides  in  such  a  quarrel  as  that  between  Gregory  VII. 
and  Henry  IV.,  the  effect  of  this  doctrine  must  be — 
was  intended  to  be — to  expose  the  dominions  of  the 
king  and  his  defenceless  people  to  the  miseries  of 
civil  war,  aggravated  by  the  impunity  guaranteed  to 
the  rebellious  party  by  the  Pope.  For  if  the  rebellious 
party,  fighting  under  the  license  of  the  Pope,  were  suc- 
cessful, the  plunder  of  the  loyal  nobles  and  of  the  king 
would  be  their  reward  ;  whereas,  if  the  king  were  vic- 
torious, the  penalties  of  treason  could  not   be  enacted, 


*  Notice  that  all  this  is  the  extension  of  the  ideas  involved  in  the  move- 
ment of  the  "  Truce  of  God  "  of  which  I  have  spoken  above.  When 
thus  applied  to  the  sovereign  it  was  jiernicious  in  the  extreme,  because  it 
destroyed  the  autonomy  of  the  nation. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     273 

because  the  Papal  aegis  would  be  held  over  them,  and 
their  pardon  be  insisted  upon  as  the  condition  of  recon- 
ciliation with  the  Church.  The  turbulent  nobles  who 
chafed  under  the  restraints  of  the  royal  authority  would 
be  eager  to  rebel,  if  they  could  thus  do  it  with  safety  ; 
and  thus  the  Papacy,  instead  of  being  the  conservator 
of  public  order,  as  is  claimed  for  it  by  its  advocates, 
was,  it  seems  to  me,  the  one  great  obstacle  to  the 
progress  of  Europe  in  the  ages  of  its  domination.  Add 
to  this  the  stirring  up  of  kingdom  against  kingdom, 
and  the  invention  of  the  interdict  to  punish  a  people 
who  would  not  rebel,  and  the  mischief  done  by  the 
Papacy  is  incalculable,  and  is  not  to  be  offset  by  the 
erection  of  the  Papal  curia  as  a  tribunal  of  last 
resort. 

In  one  respect  the  Papacy  was  an  advantage  to 
Western  Christendom  in  that  transition  period  when 
the  nations  were  awaking  to  new  life.  It  preserved 
the  idea  of  the  unity  of  the  Church,  as  greater  than 
the  nation  ;  and  it  operated  to  some  extent  to  arrest 
the  secularization  of  the  clerical  body.  It  gave  the 
greater  men  larger  ideas  and  wider  interests  ;  it  as- 
sisted in  the  organization  of  the  commonwealth  of 
nations.  But  further  than  that  it  cannot  be  said  that 
the  programme  of  Gregory  VII.  succeeded.  The  Popes 
succeeded  in  getting  it  accepted  as  canon  law  that  the 
clergy  should  not  marry;  but  their  own  lawyers  in- 
vented evasions,  and  that  which,  but  for  such  laws  and 
evasions,  would  have  been  the  honorable  estate  which 

18 


274    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  a7id  Political 

it  is  among  us,  became  the  scandal  of  the  later  Middle 
Ages.     They  succeeded  in  modifying  the  relation  of 
the  ecclesiastics  to  the  temporal  power,  and  in  attach- 
ing to  the  Roman  see  a  type  of  Churchmen  like  Thomas 
a  Becket,  but  not    of  clear-sighted,  honest    men   like 
Lanfranc.      They  did    not  succeed  in  denationalizing 
the  clerical  order,  although  they  paralyzed  the  impulse 
towards  internal  reform  in  the  national  Churches,  by 
requiring  all  things  to  be  referred  to  Rome  for  con- 
firmation.    They   succeeded   in  stirring   up  rebellions 
here  and  there,  as  against  Henry  II.  and  Frederick  II. 
of  Germany,  or  in  taking  advantage  of  the  national 
discontent  at  misrule,  as  in  the  case  of  King  John  of 
England ;    but  they  could  not  dispose  of  thrones  and 
sceptres   at   their   will.      Rudolph  of  Suabia  was  not 
successful  in  holding  the  Empire  against  Henry,  nor 
Otho  of  Saxony  against  Frederick,  and  there  were  more 
anti-popes  than  rival  Kings  or  Emperors.*     No  Em- 
peror after  Henry  IV.  was  dethroned  because  of  their 
anathemas;    the   gradual  weakening    of  the    imperial 
power  was  due  to  political  causes  internal  to  Germany, 
and  to  the  incompatibility  of  Germany  and  Italy.     As 
mediators  between  the  sovereigns  of  different   nations 
they  exerted  an  influence  sometimes  beneficial  ;  and 
sometimes  their  influence   was  hurtful  by  stirring  up 
war  for  their  own  purposes  ;  but  they  did  not  succeed 
in  establishing  an  effective   control  or  suzerainty  over 


♦Between  Leo  IX.  and  Innocent  III.,  twelve  anti-popes  were  set  up. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformatioji,      275 

any  but  the  smaller  and  insignificant  kingdoms. 
They  could  avail  themselves  of  the  difficulties  or  false 
steps  of  a  great  ruler  like  Frederick  Barbarossa,  or 
Henry  Plantagenet,  to  gain  an  apparent  triumph  ;  but 
they  could  not  obtain  any  real  advantage  over  them. 
In  extending  their  authority  over  the  Western  Church, 
while  they  made  themselves  the  ultimate  court  of 
appeal  in  all  causes,  they  depraved  the  canon  law  by 
inserting  in  it  the  False  Decretals,  and  they  were  very 
generally  charged  with  giving  judgment  in  favor  of  the 
longest  purse.  The  great  movements  of  the  Crusades, 
in  which  their  influence  is  most  apparent,  were  gigantic 
failures  as  regards'the  end  sought  to  be  attained.  The 
first  only  was  successful ;  while  the  ultimate  results 
were  destructive  of  the  political  influence  of  the  Papacy. 
The  conquest  of  Constantinople  by  the  soldiers  of  the 
Third  Crusade,  and  the  establishment  of  the  Latin 
Empire  of  the  East,  did  not  reduce  the  Greeks  to  the 
Papal  obedience  ;  and  the  dominion  of  the  Latins  was 
short-lived.  There  was,  in  the  traditions  and  feelings 
of  rulers  and  people  in  the  various  nations  and  national 
Churches,  an  effective  barrier  against  the  Hildebrandine 
assumptions  which  the  Popes  were  never  able  to  sur- 
mount. When  Frederick  Barbarossa  called  in  the 
Italian  lawyers  to  declare  his  rights  as  Emperor  ac- 
cording to  the  Code  of  Justinian  ;  when  the  English 
barons,  under  the  leadership  of  their  patriotic  arch- 
bishop Stephen  Langton,  affirmed  the  validity  of 
Magna  Charta  against  Innocent  III.  as  well  as  against 


2/6   Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

King  John;  when  Philip  Augustus  refused  to  do  hom- 
age for  certain  lands  held  of  the  Church,  on  the  ground 
that  the  King  must  not  do  homage  to  any  one;  and 
when  his  grandson,  the  sainted  Louis  IX.,  issued  his 
Pragmatic  Sanction  as  the  bulwark  of  the  liberties  of 
the  Galilean  Church,  the  death-knell  of  the  Papal 
theory  of  Gregory  VII.  was  sounded.  The  Papacy  as 
formulated  by  that  theory  does  not  exist,  and  never  has 
existed.  The  Popes  hold  to  it,  and  make  the  extrav- 
agant claims  based  upon  it;  but  the  Catholic  Church 
has  never  accepted  it;  and  the  nations  and  national 
Churches  of  "  the  Roman  obedience"  have  been  obedi- 
ent with  extensive  reservations. 

Even  where  the  Popes  seemed  to  be  most  successful, 
an  analysis  of  the  political  situation  shows  that  their 
success  was  due,  less  to  the  inherent  strength  of  the 
Papacy,  than  to  the  separate  designs  and  objects  of 
those  who  co-operated  with  them.  Next  to  the  penance 
of  Henry  IV.  at  Canossa,  the  most  striking  demon- 
stration of  the  Papal  supremacy  in  the  Middle  Ages 
was  the  reconciliation  of  Frederick  Barbarossa  with 
Alexander  III.  at  Venice,  on  the  24th  of  July,  1177. 
The  great  Emperor  prostrated  himself  at  the  feet  of 
the  Pope,  and  paid  him  the  respect  of  holding  his 
stirrup  and  bridle  as  he  mounted  his  palfrey.  By  thus 
submitting  himself,  Frederick  brought  to  an  end  a 
strife  of  more  than  twenty  years.  But  the  Treaty  of 
Venice,  though  it  brought  peace,  settled  nothing,  so 
far  as  the  Pope  was  concerned,  except  the   acknowl- 


Front  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     277 

edgment  of  his  title  as  Pope,  and  the  renunciation  of 
the  anti-pope.  The  advantages  gained  were  gained  by 
the  Italian  cities,  which  had  been  the  allies  of  the  Pope, 
not  for  his  sake,  but  to  secure  their  own  liberties. 
These  cities,  while  Italy  was  neglected  by  preceding 
Emperors,  had  become  prosperous  by  industry  and 
commerce,  and  had  learned  in  the  school  of  necessity 
to  defend  themselves  against  the  disorderly  nobles  of 
their  vicinity,  as  well  as  against  barbarian  enemies ; 
they  had  therefore  formed  themselves  into  republics  on 
the  model  of  the  ancient  commonwealths  of  classical 
antiquity.  Italian  republicanism,  however,  was  not  the 
enlightened  and  expansive  love  of  country  which  ani- 
mates the  patriotic  citizen  of  the  United  States;  it 
confined  its  love  of  liberty  within  the  walls  of  its  own 
city,  and  was  quite  willing  to  subjugate  and  oppress  its 
neighbors.  The  country,  meantime,  was  in  the  hands 
of  the  old  families  as  nobles  and  proprietors,  and  these 
were  not  on  good  terms  with  the  cities,  whose  liberties 
they  grudged,  and  whose  tradesmen  they  despised. 
When  Frederick,  therefore,  made  his  first  appearance 
as  Emperor  in  Italy,  and  summoned  his  vassals  to  the 
Imperial  Diet  on  the  plains  of  Roncaglia,  he  was  met 
with  complaints  of  some  of  the  smaller  towns  against 
the  larger,  especially  against  Milan,  and  he  proceeded 
to  do  justice  upon  the  offenders.  Frederick  Barbarossa 
was  above  all  things  a  just  man.  He  was  always  ready 
to  concede  to  every  one  his  undoubted  rights;  but  he 
was  also  determined  to  make  his  own  respected.     He 


278    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

was  strenuous  in  asserting  that  he  held  the  Imperial 
Crown  of  God  alone;  he  knew  very  well  that  the  Papal 
claims  were  novelties  and  encroachments  upon  his 
prerogative;  the  Empire,  as  a  divine  trust  committed 
to  him  was  the  "  Holy  Roman  Empire,"  and  its  dignity 
and  power  must  suffer  no  diminution  in  his  hands.  He 
was  resolute,  therefore,  to  resume  those  imperial  rights 
which  some  of  his  predecessors  had  weakly  suffered  to 
fall  into  abeyance.  At  the  same  time  he  had  a  reverent 
respect  for  all  law  enacted  by  the  recognized  authority 
in  Church  or  State,  and  he  was  willing  that  his  authority 
should  be  so  ascertained;  but  he  would  submit  to  no 
usurpation,  and  tolerate  no  rebellion.  When  he  was  in 
Germany,  he  governed  according  to  the  known  customs 
and  laws  of  the  German  Kingdom;  when  he  went  to 
Italy,  he  summoned  the  Italian  lawyers  to  declare  what 
were  the  imperial  rights  in  Italy,  and  what  were  the 
legally  recognized  rights  and  franchises  of  the  Italian 
cities.  The  lawyers  expounded  to  him  the  Code  of 
Justinian,  and  informed  him  that  by  the  civil  law  his 
power  as  Emperor  was  autocratic;  and  the  investigation 
into  the  status  of  the  cities  showed  him  that  they  had 
assumed  to  exercise  certain  "regalia"  without  authority. 
Frederick,  therefore,  was  justified  in  proceeding  against 
the  offenders;  but  his  conception  of  his  prerogative  was 
totally  opposed,  not  only  to  the  Papal  theory  of  Hilde- 
brand,  but  to  the  nascent  republicanism  and  indepen- 
dent feeling  of  the  cities.  A  conflict,  therefore,  was 
inevitable.      It  was  embittered,  not  only  by  the  Em- 


Front  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      2  79 

peror's  persuasion  that  he  was  dealing  with  rebels,  but 
by  the  jealousy  of  the  Italian  cities  against  each  other, 
which  caused  them  to  take  sides  as  imperialists  and 
anti-imperialists  or,  in  other  words  as  Ghibelline  and 
Guelph  ;  and  by  the  active  intervention  of  the  Pope, 
who  was  determined  by  every  means  in  his  power  to 
destroy  the  imperial  authority  in  Italy.  The  war  lasted 
for  twenty  years ;  Frederick  set  up  an  anti-pope,  and 
destroyed  city  after  city ;  but  after  the  final  defeat  of 
his  army  at  Legnano,  he  became  convinced  that  his 
position  was  untenable,  and  like  the  great  and  magnan- 
imous man  he  was,  he  made  a  just  and  honorable  peace, 
rendering  to  the  Pope  the  outward  respect  which  custom 
sanctioned  as  due  to  the  spiritual  head  of  the  Church, 
and  in  1 183,  by  the  Treaty  of  Constance,  securing  to  the 
cities  of  Lombardy  such  franchises  and  privileges  as 
they  had  fairly  won — a  treaty  which  he  and  his  descend- 
ants faithfully  observed.  Although  defeated,  Fred- 
erick's dignity  suffered  no  diminution,  and  when  in 
1 184  he  made  his  last  expedition  into  Italy  to  marry  his 
son  Henry  to  Constance,  the  heiress  of  Sicily,  the 
Lombard  cities  welcomed  him  enthusiastically,  and 
vied  with  one  another  in  doing  him  honor. 

The  other  great  triumph  of  the  Papacy,  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  House  of  Hohenstauffen — the  long  war  with 
Frederick  the  Second,  and  the  calling  in  of  Charles  of 
Anjou  to  wrest  the  Kingdom  of  Sicily  from  Manfred 
and  Conradin — though  it  is  made  use  of  by  historians 
of  a  certain  class,  to  point  the  moral  of  the  vanity  of 


28o    C Jivistendom  Ecclesiastical  a7id  Political 

earthly  greatness  in  conflict  with  the  spiritual  power, 
was  in  reality  the  beginning  of  the  downfall  of  the 
Papacy  itself  The  indignation  of  Europe  was  aroused 
at  the  treatment  of  an  able  and  enlightened  ruler  as 
Frederick  was,  by  Gregory  IX.  and  Innocent  IV. — at 
the  implacable  hatred  displayed  by  them,  and  their 
manifest  determination  that  under  no  circumstances 
should  Frederick  be  justified  in  what  he  did,  or  what  he 
left  undone.  Its  patience  was  exhausted  at  the  shame- 
less demands  of  money  to  carry  on  the  crusade  against 
him  ;  and  the  vile  traffic  in  sacred  things  to  obtain  the 
money.  And  the  success  of  Charles  of  Anjou  was  the 
means  of  making  the  Papacy,  in  the  person  of  Martin 
IV.,  the  obsequious  servant  of  that  usurper,  and  of  pre- 
paring the  way  for  that  influence  of  France  in  the  sacred 
college,  which  resulted  in  the  transfer  of  the  Papacy 
to  Avignon,  and  the  so-called  "Babylonish  Captivity" 
of  the  Popes.  But  I  cannot  enlarge  upon  that  in  this 
lecture  ;  I  shall  have  something  to  say  upon  it  in  the 
next  ;  and  in  the  meantime  any  history  of  this  period 
will  give  you  the  facts. 

A  remark  to  be  made  in  passing  is,  that  the  struggle 
between  Pope  and  Emperor  for  influence  in  Italy,  had 
one  result  in  that  country  which  was  peculiar  to  it.  I 
shall  have  occasion  in  the  next  lecture  to  point  out  that 
the  rise  of  the  people  to  political  influence,  and  their 
interest  in  the  integrity  and  peace  of  the  nation  made 
them  espouse  the  cause  of  King  against  Pope,  and  so 
curtailed  the  political  power  of  the  Papacy.     In  Italy  it 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      281 

was  different.  The  fact  that  the  Italian  cities  were 
contending  against  a  foreign  sovereign  in  the  person  of 
Barbarossa,  and  that  this  foreign  sovereign  was  a  feudal 
chief  in  Germany,  attended  by  his  aristocracy,  and 
served  by  Italian  nobles,  and  that  the  Popes  sustained 
the  cities  in  their  struggle  against  the  Emperor,  made, 
on  the  whole,  the  conflict  of  Guelph  against  Ghibelline, 
a  conflict  of  the  democracy  against  the  aristocracy. 
There  were  many  exceptions  to  this.  The  jealousy 
and  hostility  of  city  against  city  made  one  city  Ghibel- 
line because  another  city  was  Guelph  ;  and  then  the 
spirit  of  faction  within  the  city,  made  one  party  Guelph 
because  the  other  party  was  Ghibelline,  and  the  nobles 
in  like  manner  took  their  sides  ;  but  nevertheless,  on 
the  whole,  as  I  said,  at  this  time,  the  more  democratic 
party  was  Guelph,  and  the  more  aristocratic  party  was 
Ghibelline.  Later  it  was  not  so  ;  as  Italy  sunk  under 
the  effects  of  the  Papal  policy  into  a  chaotic  state,  and 
all  national  aspirations  died  out,  the  parties  perpetuated 
themselves  as  personal  animosities,  and  had  no  religious 
or  political  meaning.  But  this  was  the  condition  at 
this  time.  And  in  this,  Italy  was  alone.  In  the  other 
countries  the  people  sided  with  their  kings.  Do  not 
make  the  mistake,  therefore,  of  supposing  that  the 
strength  of  the  Papacy  lay  in  its  espousing  the  cause  of 
tha  people,  for  it  never  did  that  with  any  sincerity. 
Even  in  Gregory  VII.'s  time,  the  cities  of  Germany 
sided  with  Henry  IV. 


282     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

But  even  in  Italy,  there  was  one  city  in  which  neither 
the  democratic  nor  the  aristocratic  element  could  be 
depended  upon  for  loyalty  to  the  Popes,  and  that  was 
their  own  city  of  Rome.  Most  remarkable,  in  view  of 
their  pretensions  at  this  time,  was  the  relation  of  the 
Popes  to  that  city  whence  they  took  their  title,  to  that 
see  whence  they  were  supposed  to  derive  their  sanctity, 
and  to  those  people  who  were  above  all  others  their 
especial  charge.  I  have  been  at  the  pains  to  make  from 
Robertson  and  others  a  synopsis  of  their  frequent  ex- 
pulsions from  Rome,  and  print  it  here  for  those  who 
may  wish  to  see  it.  Beginning  with  Gregory  VII.:  he 
retired  from  Rome  under  the  hatred  aroused  against 
him  because  of  the  devastation  of  the  city  by  Robert 
Guiscard,  whom  he  called  in  to  resist  Henry  IV.,  and 
died  at  Salerno,  with  words  upon  his  lips  "  which  have 
been  interpreted  as  a  reproach  against  Providence,  but 
which  may  perhaps  rather  imply  a  claim  to  the  beati- 
tude of  the  persecuted  :  '  I  have  loved  righteousness 
and  hated  iniquity,  and  therefore  I  die  in  exile.'  "  His 
successor,  Victor  III.,  was  conducted  to  Rome  by  a 
Norman  force,  but  he  soon  left  it,  and  died  at  Monte 
Casino.  Urban  II.,  elected  in  1088,  did  not  obtain  un- 
disputed possession  of  Rome  until  eleven  years  after, 
and  in  that  year  he  died.  His  successor.  Paschal  II., 
having  left  the  city  on  the  approach  of  Henry  V,  of 
Germany,  in  11 17,  the  citizens  refused  to  permit  his 
return  after  Henry's  departure,  and  he  was  able  to  get 
possession  only  of  the  castle  of  St.  Angelo,  where  he 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     283 

died.  He  was  succeeded  by  Gelasius  II.,  who,  in  his 
short  pontificate  of  one  year,  was  twice  brutally 
assaulted  by  one  of  the  nobles  of  his  flock,  and  twice 
driven  out  of  the  city.  He  died  in  the  abbey  of  Clugny. 
Calixtus  II, ,  who  came  next,  was  elected  at  Clugny, 
and  consecrated  at  Vienne  ;  he  remained  in  France  for 
two  years,  and  then  obtained  possession  of  Rome, 
where  he  exerted  himself  vigorously  to  put  down  law- 
lessness. On  his  death  Theobald  was  elected,  but  was 
frightened  out  of  the  Papal  chair  by  Robert  Frangipani, 
a  powerful  noble,  who  made  Honorius  II.  Pope.  When 
he  died,  the  rival  factions  set  up  Anacletus  II.  and 
Innocent  II.  Innocent  is  reckoned  the  legitimate  Pope, 
but  Anacletus  held  the  city  of  Rome,  and  Innocent 
went  to  France.  He  was  brought  home  by  the 
Emperor  Lothair,  but  was  expelled  on  his  departure, 
and  restored  again  in  1137.  Two  years  after  this  he 
was  taken  prisoner  by  Roger  of  Sicily,  who  compelled 
him  to  acknowledge  his  title  of  king,  which  had  been 
given  him  by  the  anti-pope.  Meantime  the  Romans, 
under  the  influence  of  Arnold  of  Brescia,  renounced 
their  allegiance  to  him,  and  set  upa  republic.  Celestine 
II.,  his  successor,  was  a  friend  of  Arnold,  and  reigned 
peaceably  the  six  months  of  his  pontificate.  The 
next  Pope,  Lucius  II.,  attempting  to  put  down  the 
republic  by  force,  was  killed  by  the  mob.*     Eugenius 

*  "  To  have  slain  a  Pope  afflicted  the  Romans  with  no  remorse.  The 
Papal  party  felt  no  shame  at  the  unseemly  death  of  a  Pope  who  had 
fallen  in  actual  war  for  the  defence  of  his  temporal  power  ;  republican 
Rome  felt  no  compunction  at  the  fall  of  her  enemy." — Milman,  IV.,  243. 


284    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

III.  followed  ;  he  was  a  monk  of  Clairvaux  and  a  friend 
of  St.  Bernard  ;  he  surprised  every  one  by  his  capacity 
after  being  made  Pope  ;  but  he  could  not  get  along 
with  the  Romans.  He  was  consecrated  at  Farfa,  about 
twenty  miles  north  of  Rome.  The  Romans  under 
Arnold  of  Brescia  "  proceeded  to  reorganize  their  do- 
mestic policy  on  the  basis  of  the  total  exclusion  of  the 
Pope  from  all  share  in  the  civil  government.  *  *  * 
This  resolution  was  practically  confirmed  by  the 
plunder  and  demolition  of  the  pontifical  palaces,  those 
of  the  fugitive  cardinals,  the  castellated  dwellings  of  the 
Papal  nobili,  and  the  obliteration  of  every  vestige  of 
pontifical  state  and  government."*  Eugenius  made 
war  upon  the  city,  and  was  enabled  to  celebrate  the 
Christmas  of  1145  within  ts  walls  ;  but  the  next  April 
he  was  compelled  to  leave,  and  retired  beyond  the 
Alps,  where  he  and  St.  Bernard  organized  the  Second 
Crusade.  In  1 149  he  returned  under  the  protection  of 
the  King  of  Sicily,  but  the  Romans  again  expelled  him. 
They  allowed  him  to  come  back  in  1153,  and  he  died 
in  the  city  in  July  of  that  year.  Anastasius  IV.  was 
Pope  for  a  year  and  five  months,  and  then  Adrian  IV. 
for  four  years.  Under  the  protection  of  Frederick 
Barbarossa,  he  put  down  the  republic  and  hung  Arnold 
of  Brescia  ;  but  after  crowning  the  Emperor  he  was 
compelled  to  leave  Rome,  and  died  at  Anagni.  On 
his  death  the  Sicilian  party  in  the  Roman  Church  set 

♦Greenwood,  Cathedra  Petri,  V.,  44. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reforntation.    285 

up  Alexander  III.  and  the  Imperialist,  Victor  IV. 
Alexander  is  counted  the  Pope,  Victor  the  anti-pope  ; 
each  was  consecrated  out  of  Rome.  Alexander  resided 
at  Anagni  till  1161,  when  he  withdrew  to  France.  He 
came  to  Rome  in  December,  1165,  and  was  enthusias- 
tically received  ;  but  was  driven  out  by  Barbarossa  in 
1 167,  and  did  not  return  again  until  after  his  reconcili- 
ation with  the  Emperor  at  Venice.  In  1179  he  held  a 
great  Council  (Third  of  Lateran),  and  among  other 
things  decreed  that  the  election  of  Pope  should  rest 
exclusively  in  the  College  of  Cardinals.  He  then  retired 
from  Rome,  and  died  at  Civita  Castellana  in  1185. 
On  the  election  of  Lucius  III.  by  the  cardinals  only, 
under  the  constitution  of  Alexander,  the  Romans,  in- 
dignant at  being  deprived  of  their  share  in  the  election, 
rose  against  the  Pope  and  expelled  him,  and  he  was 
never  able  to  obtain  a  secure  footing  in  the  city.  Urban 
III.  succeeded  him  ;  he  seems  never  to  have  set  foot  in 
Rome  as  Pope.  The  next  was  Gregory  VIII.;  he 
reigned  only  one  month  and  twenty-one  days,  and  did 
not  enter  the  city.  Then  came  Clement  III.;  he  made 
a  treaty  with  the  Romans  by  which  he  consented  to 
deliver  up  the  cities  of  Tusculum  and  Tibur  to  their 
vengeance,  as  the  price  of  their  consent  to  receive  him. 
After  him  came  Celestine  III.,  and  then  Innocent  III., 
who  was  able  to  hold  the  Romans  in  check. 

Of  the  Popes  who  followed  Innocent,  Gregory  IX. 
was  driven  out  by  the  Romans  in  Eastertide  1228, 
because  he  had  excommunicated  the  Emperor  Fred- 


286    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

erick  II. ;  in  two  years  his  subjects  invited  him  back,  but 
the  year  after  he  had  to  appeal  to  the  Emperor  for 
assistance  against  them,  which  was  refused,  and  he 
retired  from  the  city.  In  1232  he  returned,  but  was 
again  expelled  in  1234,  and  was<|?estored  by  Frederick 
during  an  interval  of  peace  between  Emperor  and  Pope. 
His  successor  Innocent  IV.  fled  from  Rome  at  the  ap- 
proach of  Frederick,  and  retired  to  Lyons  in  1244;  he 
sought  invitations  to  visit  the  Kingdoms  of  France, 
England  and  Spain,  but  the  sovereigns  of  these 
countries  declined  the  honor.  On  the  death  of  Fred- 
erick he  went  to  Italy,  but  showed  no  disposition  to 
return  to  Rome  until  the  senator  Brancaleone  sternly 
reminded  him  that  he  was  bishop  of  that  city,  and  re- 
quired his  residence;  he  could  not  have  been  there 
long,  however,  as  he  died  at  Naples  the  same  year 
(Dec.  7,  1254).  The  next  Pope,  Alexander  IV.,  was 
compelled  by  the  Romans,  who  had  again  set  up  a 
republic,  to  reside  in  their  midst;  but  in  1257  they 
drove  him  out,  and  he  died  at  Viterbo  in  1261.  After 
this,  Viterbo  became  the  ordinary  residence  of  the 
Popes,  six  of  whom  succeeded  one  another  with  great 
rapidity — the  cardinals  adopting  the  policy  of  choosing 
the  oldest  or  most  infirm  of  their  number  to  be  Pope, 
to  create  the  next  vacancy  the  sooner.  Nicholas  III. 
(1277)  transferred  the  Papal  residence  back  to  Rome; 
but  Charles  of  Anjou's  Pope,  Martin  IV.,  made  his  resi- 
dence at  Orvieto.  Nicholas  IV.  lived  at  Rieta,  but 
removed  to  Rome  under  the  protection  of  the  Colonna 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     287 

family.  After  him  there  was  a  vacancy  of  two  years 
and  three  months;  then  came  Celestine  V.,  who  abdi- 
cated in  a  short  time;  and  then  Boniface  VIII.,  with 
whom  the  Hne  of  Hildebrandine  Popes  came  to  an  end. 
After  him  the  Papacy  went  to  Avignon. 

This  is  certainly  a  startling  exhibit  for  the  time  at 
which  the  Papal  power  was  at  its  height.  It  may  at 
least  cause  us  to  inquire  whether  the  progress  of 
Europe,  which  was  very  great  at  this  time,  was  much 
affected  by  the  Papal  supremacy.  The  twelfth  and ' 
thirteenth  centuries  were  times  of  a  great  awakening 
of  political  and  intellectual  activity,  of  an  advance  in 
the  material,  moral  and  social  condition  of  Europe;  and 
that  advance,  being  contemporary  with  the  exaltation 
of  the  Papacy,  is  plausibly  set  forth  as  due  to  that 
exaltation,  and  made  to  redound  to  its  credit.  But  it 
is  very  easy  to  show,  as  I  shall  show  in  the  next  lecture, 
that  the  awakening  and  advance  were  independent  of 
the  Papacy  ;  and  that  the  Papacy  itself  was  an  effect  of 
its  earlier  development,  and  a  hindrance  to  its  later. 


VI. 

NATIONALISM. 


VI. 
NATIONALISM. 


It  is  the  greatest  fallacy  in  the  world  to  call  the 
Church  of  Western  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages  the 
Roman  Church,  or  the  Romish  Church,  or  even  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church.  The  writers  of  the  Middle 
Ages  themselves  accurately  distinguish  between  the 
Roman  Church  and  the  National  Churches  which  were 
in  communion  with  it.  The  English  Church,  for  ex- 
ample, is  the  English  Church  in  Magna  Charta,  and  in 
the  Statutes  of  Provisors  and  Praemunire;  while  the 
Roman  Church  in  contemporary  documents  stands  for 
the  local  church  of  the  city  of  Rome.  The  National 
Churches,  although  in  the  period  now  under  review,  they 
acknowledged  the  primacy  or  supremacy  of  the  Roman 
pontiff,  did  not  acknowledge  it  in  the  same  way  that 
the  Churches  of  the  Roman  obedience  do  now,  and 
have  done  since  the  Council  of  Trent  and  the  Creed  of 
Pope  Pius  IV.  Still  less  did  they  draw  their  spiritual 
vitality  from  that  fountain.  It  suits  the  infidel  or  ultra- 
Protestant  historian  to  make  the  mistake  of  ignoring 
these  National  Churches,  and  confounding  them  under 
the  one  name,  that  he  may  discredit  the  Church  idea, 


292    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

and  make  it  appear  that  the  Church  failed  in  "the  Dark 
Ages,"  notwithstanding  our  Saviour's  promise  that  the 
gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against  it ;  and  it  suits 
the  Romish  controversialist  to  foster  this  mistake, 
because  it  enables  him  to  claim  for  the  Roman  Church 
the  credit  of  all  the  good  that  belongs  to  this  period — 
of  which  there  was  a  great  deal.  But  it  does  not 
become  us  of  the  American  Catholic  Church  to  fall  into 
the  same  error.  The  National  Churches  had  their  own 
traditions  and  lived  their  own  spiritual  life;  they  held 
the  loyal  adhesion  of  their  people  because  they  were 
the  National  Churches;  and  they  did  not  begin  to  lose 
it  until  from  the  time  of  Innocent  IV.,  and  during  the 
Avignon  period  and  the  Great  Schism  that  followed  it, 
curialism  made  them  its  prey.  These  Churches  were 
worthy  of  the  loyalty  and  love  that  were  so  freely  given 
them,  because  (despite  the  superstitions  and  abuses 
popularly  attributed  to  this  period)  they  were  honestly 
engaged  in  the  endeavor  to  lead  the  people  heavenward 
through  faith  in  Christ,  and  the  knowledge  of  the  truth. 
The  point  I  make  is,  that  the  intellectual,  moral  and 
social  advance  of  Europe  in  the  eleventh,  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  centuries  was  due  to  the  religious  and  civil- 
izing influence  of  the  National  Churches;  that  the  Pa- 
pacy was  at  most  only  auxiliary  to  them  in  its  better 
period,  and  was  distinctly  oppressive  and  corrupting  to 
them  in  its  worse  and  later  period;  that  the  evidences 
of  spiritual  life  are  found  in  tJicir  spontaneous  efforts; 
that  the  great  moral  and  spiritual   movements  of  the 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     293 

period  had  their  various  centres  in  the  National 
Churches  of  Europe;  and  that  we  must  study  these 
National  Churches  as  well  as  the  Papacy,  if  we  would 
know  the  real  state  of  Christianity  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

It  was  natural,  of  course,  that  the  ecclesiastics  of  high 
hierarchical  principles,  as  well  as  some  of  the  imagina- 
tive and  enthusiastic  saints,  should  throw  themselves 
into  the  Papal  movement,  so  far  as  it  promised  to 
make  the  hierarchy  less  worldly  and  more  ascetic.  But 
this  alliance  with  the  Papacy,  this  subordination  and 
loyalty  to  it  of  good  and  holy  men,  does  not  prove  or 
imply  that  they  found  in  it  the  springs  of  their  spiritual 
life.  He  would  be  greatly  in  error  who  should  count 
St.  Anselm,  the  first  of  the  Schoolmen,  or  St.  Bernard, 
the  last  of  the  Fathers,  a  Romanist  of  the  Tridentine 
type,  or  assume  that  the  Rome  of  the  eleventh  or 
twelfth  century  made  them  what  they  were.  The 
truth  is  that  both  St.  Anselm  and  St.  Bernard  were 
suspicious  of  the  vast  claims  of  the  Papacy,  and  were 
willing  to  see  them  curtailed  because  they  were  injuri- 
ous to  the  National  Churches,  It  was  the  traditional 
Christianity  descending  to  their  generations  in  the 
national  and  local  churches,  which  made  these  men 
what  they  were. 

Take  St.  Bernard  for  the  example.  I  have  in  the  last 
lecture  spoken  of  the  influence  of  the  great  monastery 
of  Clugny  in  the  period  preceding  the  Hildebrandine, 
and  its  connection  with  the  reform  of  the  Papacy.  In 
course   of  time,   and  in  consequence  of  the    general 


294    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

revival,  of  which  the  Hildebrandine  movement  was  an 
effect  rather  than  a  cause,  other  orders  of  monks  sprang 
up  under  rules  much  more  severe  than  that  of  Clugny, 
the  chief  of  which  were  the  Carthusians  and  the  Cister- 
cians. St.  Bernard  is  the  great  glory  of  the  Cistercian 
order.  No  envy  can,  no  calumny  attempts  to  detract 
from  the  bright  example  of  that  great  saint.  His  aus- 
terities may  have  been  uncalled  for  and  unwise;  his 
advocacy  of  the  Second  Crusade  led  many  brave  men  to 
destruction  without  any  compensating  benefit  to  Chris- 
tendom; but  when  you  get  to  the  inner  heart  of  the 
man  himself,  you  find  it  filled  with  the  pure  love  of  God 
and  of  his  fellows;  you  find  a  man  whom  no  amount  of 
popularity  could  corrupt,  who  was  sincere,  faithful, 
honest,  Christian  through  and  through,  who  was 
learned  in  the  best  school  of  Christian  thought — "the 
last  of  the  Fathers"  they  call  him,  because  his  method 
was  the  patristic,  and  not  that  of  the  scholastics  of  the 
next  age.  The  wonderful  personal  magnetism  of  St. 
Bernard,  his  infectious  enthusiasm,  his  unbounded 
influence  over  everyone  who  came  within  his  reach, 
his  immense  activity,  his  complete  abnegation  of  self — 
these  were  sanctified,  under  the  rigid  discipline  of  the 
Cistercian  order,  by  the  grace  of  God's  Holy  Spirit  in 
the  heart  of  the  sincere  seeker  after  righteousness,  to 
make  him  an  illustrious  example  of  that  principle  of  the 
Christian  life  enunciated  by  St.  Paul:  "  I  live,  yet  not 
I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me,  and  the  life  that  I  now  live 


From  Constantine  to  the  Re/ormalwn.      295 


in  the  flesh,  I  live  by  the  faith  of  the  Son  of  God,  who 
loved  me,  and  gave  Himself  for  me." 

Now  St.  Bernard  was  a  zealous  champion  of  Innocent 
II.  in  his  contest  with  the  anti-pope  Anacletus,  and  the 
friend  and  monitor  of  Eugenius  III.,  who  had  been  one 
of  his  monks  at  Clairvaux;  but  he  was  not  a  product  of 
Hildebrandine  Romanism.  He  was  one  of  those,  of 
whom  there  were  many  in  the  Middle  Ages,  who  were 
carefully  brought  up  at  home  by  a  pious  mother.  You 
remember  the  story  of  his  entering  Citeaux  with  thirty 
followers  whom  he  had  won  by  his  persuasiveness ; 
among  them  all  his  brothers,  except  the  youngest,  who 
remained  at  home  with  his  aged  father — both  of  these 
joining  him  after  a  short  time.  As  abbot  of  Clairvaux 
he  became,  through  no  other  influence  than  his  exalted 
piety,  the  oracle  of  Europe — more  really  pope  than  the 
Pope  himself  He  gained  the  allegiance  of  France,  of 
England,  and  of  Germany  to  Innocent  II.;  but  when 
Innocent  visited  him  at  Clairvaux,  the  Puritan  simplici- 
ty and  monastic  rigor  of  the  Cistercians  were  so  uncon- 
genial to  the  Pope  and  his  cardinals,  that  they  had  no 
desire  to  tarry  long  with  him.  As  the  promoter  of  the 
Second  Crusade  he  carried  away  all  Europe  with  his 
enthusiasm,  performing  the  "miracle"  of  winning  Con- 
rad III.,  the  Emperor  of  Germany,  to  take  the  cross. 
He  is  not  only  the  friend  but  the  instructor  of  Eugenius 
III.,  for  whom  he  writes  his  treatise  "On  Consideration." 
But  closely  as  he  is  connected  with  the  Holy  See,  he 
stands  up  manfully  for  the  rights  of  the  National  Church 


296     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

and  its  bishops,  and  is  not  sparing  of  rebukes  to  the 
Pope  himself. 

Thus,  having  occasion  to  write  to  Pope  Innocent  on 
behalf  of  the  Archbishop  of  Treves,  he  says  :  "I  speak 
to  you  with  a  great  deal  of  freedom,  because  I  have  a 
more  than  ordinary  affection  for  you,  which  could  not 
be,  should  I  use  dissimulation.  The  Archbishop  of 
Treves'  complaint  is  not  his  alone,  but  proceeds  from 
the  sentiments  of  several  others,  and  chiefly  those  that 
love  you  best.  They  complain  that  justice  is  no  more 
to  be  found  in  the  Church,  that  the  keys  thereof  become 
of  no  use,  and  the  Episcopal  authority  is  rendered 
despicable  by  reason  that  the  bishops  have  now  no 
more  power  to  revenge  the  injuries  done  to  God,  nor  to 
punish  the  offences  committed  in  their  dioceses.  The 
fault  of  all  which  is  laid  upon  you  and  the  Court  of 
Rome.  It  is  affirmed  that  you  abolish  what  they  have 
well  established,  and  that  you  have  established  what 
they  have  abolished  with  reason.  *  *  *  What  a 
shame  is  this !  What  occasion  for  laughter  to  the 
enemiesof  the  Church  !  Friends  find  themselves  con- 
founded, the  faithful  affronted,  bishops  become  the  sub- 
jects of  scorn  and  contempt,  and  your  authority  much 
lessened  by  the  weakness  of  your  decisions."*  To  certain 
cardinals  he  writes  in  favor  of  an  abbot  whom  he  thinks 
unjustly  treated  :  "  Formerly  you  have  been  accused  of 
domineering  over  the  clergy  and  the  consciences  of  all 

♦Ep.  178,  Dupin,  Cent.  XII.,  p.  55. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      297 

the  world,  contrary  to  the  precept  of  the  Apostle;  and 
now  you  add  something  to  this  presumption  in  showing 
an  inclination  to  dispose  absolutely  of  all  religious  per- 
sons [/.^,  monks];  insomuch  that  I  know  not  what 
remains  for  you  to  desire  more,  unless  you  would  like- 
wise command  over  the  angels."*  Of  the  proceedings 
of  Cardinal  Jordan,  in  the  character  of  Papal  legate, 
he  writes:  "He  has  passed  from  nation  to  nation,  and 
from  one  kingdom  to  another  people,  everywhere  leav- 
ing foul  and  horrible  traces  among  us.  He  is  said  to 
have  everywhere  committed  disgraceful  things;  to  have 
carried  off  the  spoils  of  churches,  to  have  promoted 
pretty  little  boys  to  ecclesiastical  honors  wherever  he 
could ;  and  to  have  wished  to  do  so  where  he  could 
not.  Many  have  bought  themselves  off  that  he  might 
not  come  to  them;  those  whom  he  could  not  visit  he 
taxed  and  squeezed  by  means  of  messengers.  In 
schools  and  courts  and  the  places  where  roads  meet, 
he  has  made  himself  a  by-word.  Seculars  and  religious, 
all  speak  ill  of  him;  the  poor,  the  monks  and  the  clergy 
complain  of  him."t  In  his  treatise  "On  Consideration," 
written  at  the  request  of  Pope  Eugenius,  he  speaks  with 
like  freedom:  "He  gives  him  to  understand  that  he  is 
not  set  over  others  to  domineer  over  them,  but  to  be 
their  minister  and  watch  over  them.  *  *  *  That  the 
same  person  cannot  well  execute  the  civil  government 

*Ep.  231,  lb.,  p.  58. 

f Robertson,  III.,  216.    Dupin,  p.  62. 


298     Christendofu  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 


and  the  Papacy,  and  therefore  he  who  grasps  at  both 
ought  justly  to  lose  both.  *">'=*  You  are  not 
supremely  perfect  by  being  supreme  bishop,  and  take 
notice  that  if  you  think  yourself  so,  you  are  the  worst  of 
men.  *  *  *  'Tis  to  you  that  the  keys  of  heaven  have 
been  entrusted,  and  to  whom  the  care  of  the  flock  has 
been  committed;  but  there  are  other  doorkeepers  of 
heaven  and  other  pastors  besides  you."  \i.c.,  the  bishops 
of  the  Church.]  It  is  evident  that  even  as  early  as  this 
the  new  Papacy  is  felt  to  be  hurtful  to  religion,  since 
St.  Bernard  is  very  severe  upon  appeals,  exemptions, 
and  other  interferences  with  the  national  Churches, 
"Everybody  appeals  to  your  Holiness;  it  is  a  badge  of 
your  primacy,  yet,  if  you  are  wise,  you  will  rather  en- 
deavor to  procure  the  welfare  of  the  Church,  than  insist 
upon  the  grandeur  of  your  see.  Men  appeal  to  the  Pope, 
and  would  to  God  it  were  to  a  good  en.d.  Would  to 
God  that  those  who  oppress  others  would  feel  the  effect 
of  protection  granted  to  those  who  are  oppressed.  But 
on  the  contrary,  nothing  is  more  common  than  for 
the  oppressors  to  have  cause  to  rejoice,  and  for  the 
oppressed  to  have  reason  to  mourn."  As  regards  ex- 
emptions he  says,  "I  have  a  mind  to  speak  of  the  com- 
plaints and  murmurings  of  the  Churches,  who  cry  con- 
tinually that  they  are  torn  to  pieces  and  dismembered, 
and  that  there  are  few  or  none  but  either  feel  this 
damage  or  fear  it.  If  you  ask,  wherefore  }  it  is  because 
the  abbeys  are  wrested  from  the  jurisdiction  of  their 
bishops,  the  bishops  from  that  of  the  archbishops,  and 


From  Const antine  to  the  Reformation.     299 

the  archbishops  from  that  of  the  patriarchs  or  primates. 
Does  this  consist  with  order  ?  Can  this  be  any  way 
excused  ?  You  may  thereby  indeed  show  the  abso- 
luteness of  your  power,  but  it  is  to  be  feared  you  can  at 
the  same  time  produce  but  httle  justice.  You  do  thus 
because  you  have  the  power  to  do  it,  but  the  question 
will  be  only  whether  you  ought  to  have  done  it.  You 
are  set  above  others  to  preserve  to  every  one  his  rank 
and  quality,  and  not  to  injure  any  one."  He  proves 
afterwards  that  these  exemptions  are  neither  just  nor 
profitable;  that  they  confound  the  economy  of  the 
Church;  that  they  occasion  a  great  deal  of  trouble, 
and  raise  a  contempt  as  well  of  the  laws  and  powers 
established  by  God  Almighty,  as  of  those  of  the 
Pope.* 

Now  these  are  the  utterances,  not  of  a  discontented 
or  rebellious  son  of  the  Church,  not  of  the  adherent  of 
an  emperor  or  anti-pope,  but  of  the  greatest  saint  of 
the  mediaeval  period;  of  one  who  was  honestly  devoted 
to  the  Papacy  as  he  understood  it,  and  highest  in  the 
confidence  of  the  Popes.  I  do  not  quote  these  passages 
to  throw  discredit  upon  the  Popes  of  this  period;  but 
simply  to  prove  what  I  said,  that  Bernard  was  not  a 
creature  of  the  Papacy,  but  a  genuine  product  (so  far  as 
any  man  with  a  distinct  individuality  can  be  said  to  be 
a  product  of  his  age  and  surroundings)  of  the  Church  of 
France,  and  of  the  traditional  Christianity  of  the  period. 

*Dupin,  Cent.  XII.,  p.  68,  69. 


300    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

That  he  was  its  most  illustrious  product  is  not  to  be 
denied;  but  where  there  was  one  Bernard  there  must 
have  been  many  good  Christians  who  made  no  noise  in 
the  world;  and  my  contention  is  that  the  Church  which 
had  such  sons  was  a  living  Church,  Papacy  or  no 
Papacy. 

The  fact  is  that  all  the  great  religious  movements  of 
this  period  had  their  rise  in  the  National  Churches,  in- 
dependently of,  and  antecedent  to,  or  concurrently  with 
the  Hildebrandine  movement.  Let  me  trace  some  of 
them  in  outline  : 

I. — The  intellectual  revival,  which  is  so  marked  in 
the  eleventh  century  and  still  more  in  the  twelfth,  and 
which  led  to  the  immense  activity  of  scholasticism  in 
the  thirteenth,  shows  that  the  traditions  of  the  age  of 
Charlemagne  had  not  died  out  in  the  tenth  century, 
and  that  as  soon  as  order  began  to  be  restored,  the 
Church  endeavored  first  to  raise  the  standard  of  cler- 
ical education,  and  then  to  educate  the  people.  Not 
only  did  Charlemagne  require  schools  to  be  kept  in  the 
cathedrals  and  monasteries,  but  a  capitulary  of  his  re- 
quired the  bishop  to  call  up  his  priests  "  by  sections 
and  weeks,"  for  instruction  by  himself  or  by  well- 
learned  ministers,  what  they  ought  to  do  and  to 
preach.*  During  the  troublous  times  that  -succeeded, 
necessity  compelled  the  acceptance  of  persons  into  the 
sacred  ministry  who  were  slenderly  furnished  for  their 

*Thomassin  De  Beneficiis,  Part  I.,  B.  III.,  c.  vi.,  4. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     301 

office.  But  the  bishops  endeavored  to  improve  them 
by  assembling  them  for  conferences,  by  the  diocesan 
synods,  by  furnishing  them  with  homilies  and  exhorta- 
tions to  read  to  the  people,  and  by  requiring  their 
attendance  at  the  cathedral  schools.*  In  the  eleventh 
century  these  schools  are  in  a  flourishing  condition, 
both  in  the  monasteries  and  in  the  cathedral  cities. 
The  fact  that  we  find  theological  controversies  arising, 
and  heresy  charged  upon  one  and  another  scholar,  such 
as  Berengar,  Roscelin,  and  later  that  erratic  and  unfort- 
unate genius  Abelard,  shows  a  revived  interest  in 
theological  studies,  and  the  beginning  of  a  feeling  for 
philosophy.  Lanfranc,  who  had  been  trained  to  the 
civil  law  in  Italy,  but  who  became  a  monk  at  Bee,  in 
Normandy,  and  later  abbot  of  Caen,  whence  he  was 
called  by  William  the  Conqueror  to  be  archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  made  the  little  monastery  of  Bee,  by  his 
teachings,  a  renowned  seminary  ;  but  he  was  surpassed 
in  fame  by  his  successor  St.  Anselm,  another  Italian, 
who  also  succeeded  him  in  the  archbishopric.  Lanfranc 
was  born  about  the  year  1005,  and  Anselm  in  1033,  and 
their  early  training  shows  that  there  were  good  schools 
in  Italy  at  that  time.  Stimulated  by  these  great 
scholars  the  Normans  established  in  England,  between 
the  Conquest  and  the  death  of  King  John,  five  hundred 
and  fifty-three  schools. t     Anselm  of  Laon,  and  William 

*Dupin,  Century  X.,  p.  68. 

f  Taine,  English  Literature,  p.  6i. 


302    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

of  Champeaux,  master  of  the  cathedral  school  of  Paris, 
each  of  whom  had  Abelafd  for  his  pupil,  were  great 
teachers;  it  is  from  William  of  Champeaux  that  the 
impulse  started  which  made  Paris  an  intellectual  centre, 
and  gave  rise  to  the  university  of  that  city,  which  re- 
ceived its  charter  from  Philip  Augustus  in  the  year 
I200.*  In  the  twelfth  century  several  universities  were 
established — that  of  Bologna,  which  was  a  celebrated 
law-school  in  the  time  of  Frederick  Barbarossa  ;  that  at 
Oxford,  where  a  professor  of  civil  law  is  known  to  have 
been  appointed  in  1149;  those  of  Montpellier  and  Sa- 
lerno, which  were  celebrated  medical  schools.  In  the 
thirteenth  century  others  were  added  to  them  ;  and  the 
learned  professions  opened  out  a  career  to  those  who 
were  disposed  to  study.  It  is  of  course  the  custom 
now  to  sneer  at  the  learning  that  was  taught  in  these 
universities  ;  but  they  were  invaluable  for  those  times, 
and  they  were  important  factors  in  the  progress  of 
Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages.  But  my  point  now  is, 
that  all  this  was  a  movement  of  the  national  Churches, 
and  a  proof  of  their  activity,  irrespective  of  the  Papacy. 
2. — Looking  in  another  direction,  we  find  the  Church 
of  this  period  (and  here  again  independently  of  the 
Papacy,  j  endeavoring  to  make  the  power  of  religion  felt 
by  all  classes  of  men,  and  to  adapt  the  divine  order  to 
the  necessities  of  the  age.  I  spoke  in  the  last  lecture 
of  the  effort  to  limit  the  right  of  private  warfare  by  the 

*  Michelet,  I.,  p.  254. 


From  Cnnstantiiic  to  the  Rcforjjiaiion.      303 


Truce  of  God.  That  was  a  spontaneous  effort  of  the 
local  Church  ;  it  was  taken  up  by  Pope  Urban  II.,  when 
he  came  into  Auvergne  to  organize  the  First  Crusade, 
and  made  universal,  so  far  as  the  canons  of  a  council 
could  make  it  universal,  at  the  Council  of  Clermont  ; 
and  if  it  did  not  accomplish  all  that  was  desired,  it  marks 
at  least  the  effort  of  the  Church  to  put  a  bridle  upon 
lawlessness.*  But  it  is  to  be  remarked  here,  that  in 
speaking  of  the  lawlessness  and  turbulence  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  it  is  scarcely  just  to  measure  them  by  the 
legal  standard  of  our  own  times.  In  the  Middle  Ages 
there  was  not  that  access  to  the  courts  for  the  redress 
of  private  wrongs,  or  for  breaches  of  the  public  peace, 
with  which  we  are  familiar.  The  law  did  not  take  to 
itself,  as  it  does  with  us,  the  monopoly  of  justice  or  of 
vengeance.  The  lord  was  bound  to  protect  his  vassal 
from  injustice,  and  to  do  him  justice  ;  but  the  vassal  was 
not  bound  to  appeal  to  his  lord,  when  he  could  do  him- 
self justice,  or  what  he  deemed  to  be  justice,  upon  the 
offender  ;  and  according  to  the  feeling  of  the  times,  he 
would  be  thought  a  coward  who  should  put  himself 
under  the  protection  of  the  law,  when  the  means  of 
righting  the  wrong  done  to  him  were  in  his  own  hands. 
That  was   the  foundation   of  the   right  of  private  war. 


*  Peter  da  Marca,  among  other  documents,  gives  a  letter  of  Alexander 
III.,  approving  of  what  appears  to  be  a  kind  of  mutual  insurance  against 
robbery,  etc.  Each  person  was  to  make  an  annual  payment  to  the  common 
fund,  and  then  if  he  were  robbed,  he  was  to  receive  the  value  of  his  goods 
provided  he  could  give  information  that  would  identify  the  robber. — Ap- 
petidix,  p.  259. 


304    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

with  all  the  misery  it  entailed  upon  the  non-combatants. 
The  vassal  appealed  to  his  lord  to  do  him  justice  upon 
the  wrong-doer  who  was  stronger  than  he,  but  not  nec- 
essarily upon  his  equal,  much  less  his  inferior.     Now 
this  idea  of  law  and  right  and  justice  was  ingrained  in 
the  feudal  system,  and  the  Church  could  not  overcome 
it  until  the  advance  of  society  brought  new  ideas  of  the 
functions  of  the  law  and  the  judge.     It  set  itself  there- 
fore to  limit  it  by  the  Truce  of  God.     But  it  did  more 
than  this.     It   endeavored  to  impress  upon   the  con- 
science of  him  who  had  the  right  of  thus  redressing  his 
own  injuries,  the  duty  of  drawing  his  sword  only  in  a 
righteous  cause,  by  surrounding  the  delivery  of  his  arms 
to  him  with  the  solemnities  of  religion,  and  pledging 
him  to  knightly  honor  and   purity  and  graciousness. 
Hence  the  institution  of  chivalry.     Its  origin  seems  to 
be  lost  in  the   mists  of  antiquity.     Historians  do  not 
seem  able  to  tell  us  when  the  Church  began  to  make 
the  conferring  of  knighthood  a  religious  ceremony.     But 
the  custom  was  certainly  older  than  the  crusades  ;  at 
first  local,  then  spreading  by  its  own  fitness,  then  be- 
coming general.     I  shall  have  occasion  to  point  out  how 
the  fine  gold  became  dim  ;  but  I  want  you  to  do  justice 
to  the  Church  by  recognizing  its  endeavor  to  fulfil  its 
duty  of  Christianizing  all  orders  of  society.     M.  Guizot 
describes  the  reception  of  a  knight  in  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury.    The  candidate  was  first  bathed,  then  clothed  in 
symbolic    garments  ;  he  observed    a  rigorous  fast  for 
twenty-four  hours ;  he  passed  the   night  in  prayer  in 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.    305 

« 

church  ;  he  made  his  confession  and  received  the  holy 
communion  ;  he  heard  a  sermon  upon  the  duties  of  3 
knight  ;  he  was  then  clothed  with  his  armor  and  re- 
ceived the  accolade.  The  same  author  gives  twenty-six 
items  of  the  knightly  oath  taken  by  the  candidate,  col- 
lected from  different  forms,  showing  that  he  promised 
to  serve  God  religiously,  and  his  prince  faithfully,  to 
maintain  the  right  of  the  weak,  to  avoid  malicious 
offence  of  anyone,  to  obey  his  commander,  to  keep  faith 
with  all  the  world,  to  be  courteous  and  humble,  and 
never  to  fail  in  his  word,  for  any  ill  or  loss  that  might 
thence  happen  to  him.*  "  There  is,"  says  Guizot,  "  in 
this  series  of  oaths,  in  the  obligations  imposed  upon 
knights,  a  moral  development  very  foreign  to  the  lay 
society  of  this  epoch.  Moral  notions  so  elevated,  often 
so  delicate,  so  scrupulous,  above  all  so  humane,  and 
always  impressed  with  the  religious  character,  evidently 
emanated  from  the  clergy.  The  clergy  alone,  at  that 
time,  thus  thought  of  the  duties  and  relations  of  men. 
Its  influence  was  constantly  employed  in  directing  the 
ideas  and  customs  which  chivalry  had  given  rise  to,  to- 
wards the  accomplishment  of  these  duties,  towards  the 
amelioration  of  these  relations." 

3. — In  still  another  direction,  the  Church  exerted  its 
influence  over  the  common  people — and  that  also  in  the 
development  of  their  traditional  institutions  entirely 
apart  from  the  Papacy.     I  refer  to  the  guilds  which  were 

*  Hence  the  proverb  :     "  Noblesse  oblige." 


3o6    Ch^'istendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

so  important  a  part  of  the  social  life  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
Of  the  various  accounts  of  their  origin,  that  of  Sir 
Francis  Palgrave  seems  the  most  reasonable,  that  they 
were  derived  from  the  Roman  municipalities  and  col- 
leges of  operatives  and  artificers.  They  were  of  different 
kinds  :  the  great  merchant  guilds  sometimes  became 
the  municipalities  of  the  cities  ;  in  other  cases,  the 
guilds  of  the  different  trades  united  formed  the  civic 
corporation  ;  in  other  cases  they  were  associations  of 
artisans,  or  particular  classes,  or  something  like  modern 
clubs  ;  again  they  were  friendly  societies,  organized  for 
mutual  assistance  ;  or  in  many  cases  they  were  purely 
religious  associations.  But  of  whatever  kind  they  were, 
their  bond  of  union  was  religious.  A  trades-union  of 
the  Middle  Ages  which  had  not  a  home  in  the  parish 
Church  and  the  blessing  of  the  priest  would  have  been 
looked  upon  as  a  monstrosity.  Of  the  purely  religious 
guilds  mention  is  made  in  a  capitulary  of  Archbishop 
Hincmar  of  Rheims,  of  the  year  859,  the  object  of  which 
was  "to  unite  men  for  every  exercise  of  religion,  for 
offerings,  for  mutual  assistance,  for  funeral  services,  for 
alms  and  other  deeds  of  piety."  The  mediaeval  Guilds 
"  were  essentially  (r/i!r/.y/m;/ societies.  *  *  *  Whilst 
embracing  the  objects  aimed  at  in  our  modern  benefit 
societies,  young  men's  associations,  clothing  clubs, 
burial  clubs,  trades-unions,  aye,  and  to  some  extent  our 
banks  and  trading  companies,  all  the  ancient  guilds 
were  based  upon  the  foundation  of  the  Christian  faith, 
which,  if  true   and  living,  must  show  itself  in  works  of 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     307 

mercy,  corporeal  and  spiritual.  Thus,  amid  the  great 
multitude  of  guilds  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  variety 
of  special  objects  for  which  they  were  founded,  we  find 
precisely  the  same  general  principles  kept  in  view. 
These  principles  were  the  united  worship  of  God,  and 
the  exercise  of  love  towards  man.  The  real  aim  of  a 
guild  was  to  make  its  members  more  devout  towards 
their  Father  in  heaven,  and  more  full  of  mercy  and 
charity  towards  their  brethren  upon  earth,"* 

Here,  then,  we  see  the  Church  (independently  of  the 
Papacy)  touching  the  secular  life  in  the  three  vocations 
which  dominated  the  Middle  Ages,  the  pursuit  of  learn- 
ing, the  pursuit  of  arms,  and  the  pursuit  of  trade.  Let 
us  get  rid  of  the  idea  that  religion  was  confined  to  the 
cloister,  of  the  idea  that  the  Church  was  merely  the 
creature  of  the  Papacy  ;  and  above  all,  let  us  get  rid  of 
the  idea  that  mediaeval  religion  was  a  mass  of  saint- 
worship  and  image-worship,t  and  of  debasing  super- 
stitions. How  such  an  idea  can  have  got  abroad  with 
the  existing  monuments  of  mediaeval  religiom  to  testify 
against  it,  defies  all  explanation.  I  want  you  now  to 
consider  what  that  religion  really  was.  We  might 
fancy,  what  with  Popes  and  monasteries,  and  legends  of 

*  Guild  Papers,  p.  42. 

f  Bellarmine,  having  to  account  for  certain  dicta  of  Thomas  Aquinas 
and  others,  contrary  to  the  Second  Council  of  Nicasa,  which  restored 
image-worship  among  the  Greeks,  is  obliged  to  confess  that  that  Council 
was  not  known  in  the  West.  Bellarmine,  De  Imaginibus  Sanctorum. 
Lib.  II.  Cap.  XXII.  Vol.  II.  p.  409.  Venice,  1721.  Charlemagne's 
work  at  the  Council  of  Frankfort  had  been  complete. 


3o8     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

the  saints,  and  scholasticism,  and  all  that  we  hear  of 
the  corruption  and  superstition  of  the  times,  that  the 
great  churches  of  Christendom,  commenced,  most  of 
them,  late  in  the  twelfth  or  early  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  and  building  we  might  say  continuously  for 
centuries,  would  show  in  their  structure  and  ornamen- 
tation a  religion  eaten  up  within  of  corruption,  and 
encrusted  without  with  superstition  ;  but  is  that  so  ? 
On  the  contrary  they  are  shrines  of  the  purest,  as  well 
as  most  sublime  conceptions  of  Christianity.  And 
what  I  want  you  particularly  to  note  is,  that  it  was 
lay-Christianity — the  Christianity  of  the  layman  who 
had  been  taught  and  guided  by  the  Church,  and  who 
brought,  with  the  bishop  and  the  priest,  his  knowledge 
and  his  skill  to  make  the  place  of  Christ's  feet  glorious. 
Gothic  architecture,  the  prevailing  architecture  of  the 
Middle  Ages  in  England,  France,  Germany,  Spain,  and 
Northern  Italy,  was  in  its  origin  and  essence  a  lay- 
architecture  ;  the  layman's  house  was  Gothic  as  well  as 
his  ChurAi  ;  while  the  purely  clerical  or  monastic  archi- 
tecture was  round-arched,  founded  on  the  ancient 
Roman  styles,  and  developing  into  what  we  call  Nor- 
man.* Here,  too,  the  evidence  of  continuous  Christian 
teaching  from  the  times  we  think  so  very  dark  is  con- 
clusive, and  the  independence  of  Rome  so  marked,  that 
Rome  is  the  one  place  in  the  West  where  Gothic  art 
found  no  abiding-place. 

*  See  an  interesting  article  on  Gothic  architecture  in  Harper's  Magazine, 
for  January,  1876. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     309 

Long  before  Gothic  architecture  became  the  prevail- 
ing style,  the  people  of  Venice  built  their  glorious  St. 
Mark's.  It  was  begun,  Prof.  Norton  tells  us,  somewhere 
about  the  year  1050,  just  at  the  time  that  Hildebrand 
began  to  be  influential,  and  before  Hildebrandine  ideas 
had  the  opportunity  to  make  themselves  felt,  and  was 
so  far  completed  in  1071,  two  years  before  Hildebrand 
became  Pope,  that  the  incrustation  of  the  interior  with 
its  mosaics  was  proceeded  with.  I  am  sorely  tempted 
to  print  entire  Mr.  Ruskin's  account  of  these  mosaics 
from  "The  Stones  of  Venice,"  to  show  the  Scriptural 
character  of  the  religion  that  conceived  them.  A  few 
sentences  from  that  matchless  description  I  must  give,* 
and  they  shall  not  be  the  ones  usually  quoted  :  "  There 
is  one  circumstance,"  says  Mr.  Ruskin,  "  to  which  I 
must  in  the  outset  direct  the  reader's  special  attention, 
as  forming  a  notable  distinction  between  ancient  and 
modern  days.  Our  eyes  are  now  familiar  and  wearied 
with  writing;  and  if  an  inscription  is  put  upon  a  build- 
ing, unless  it  be  large  and  clear,  it  is  ten  to  one  whether 
we  ever  trouble  ourselves  to  decipher  it.  But  the  old 
architect  was  sure  of  readers.  He  knew  that  everyone 
would  be  glad  to  decipher  all  that  he  wrote  ;  that  they 
would  rejoice  in  possessing  the  vaulted  leaves  of  his 
stone  manuscript ;  and  that  the  more  he  gave  them, 
the  more  grateful  would  the  people  be.     We  must  take 

*  If  I  need  an  apology  for  so  long  a  quotation,  I  must  plead  that  it 
is  necessary  to  my  argument.  There  is  but  this  one  description  of  St. 
Mark's. 


3 1  o     C hristendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

pains,  therefore,  when  we  enter  St.  Mark's,  to  read  all 
that  is  inscribed,  or  we  shall  not  penetrate  into  the 
feeling  either  of  the  builder  or  of  his  times. 

"A  large  atrium  or  portico  is  attached  to  two  sides 
of  the  Church,  a  space  which  was  especially  reserved 
for  unbaptized  persons  and  new  converts.  It  was 
thought  right  that  before  their  baptism  these  persons 
should  be  led  to  contemplate  the  great  facts  of  the  Old 
Testament  History  ;  the  history  of  the  Fall  of  Man,  and 
of  the  lives  of  the  Patriarchs,  up  to  the  period  of  the 
Covenant  by  Moses  :  the  order  of  the  subjects  in  this 
series  being  very  nearly  the  same  as  in  many  northern 
churches,  but  significantly  closing  with  the  Fall  of  the 
Manna  in  order  to  mark  to  the  catechumen  the  in- 
sufficiency of  the  Mosaic  covenant  for  salvation — '  Our 
fathers  did  eat  manna  in  the  wilderness  and  are  dead,' 
and  to  turn  his  thoughts  to  the  true  bread  of  which  that 
manna  was  the  type. 

"Then,  when  after  his  baptism  he  was  permitted  to 
enter  the  Church,  over  its  main  entrance  he  saw,  on 
looking  back,  a  mosaic  of  Christ  enthroned,  with  the 
Virgin  on  one  side  and  St.  Mark  on  the  other,  in  atti- 
tudes of  adoration.*  Christ  is  represented  as  holding 
a  book  open  upon  His  knee,  on  which  is  written  :  *  I  am 
the  Door  ;  by  Me  if  any  man  enter  in,  he  shall  be  saved.' 
On  the  red  marble  moulding  which  surrounds  the 
mosaic  is  written  :  '  I  am  the  gate  of  life  ;  let  those  who 

*  Note  that  the  Virgin  and  St.  Mark  are  pictured  as  worshippers,  not  as 
objects  of  worship. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     311 

are  Mine  enter  by  Me.'  Above,  on  the  red  marble  fillet 
which  forms  the  cornice  of  the  west  end  of  the  Church 
is  written,  with  reference  to  the  figure  of  Christ  below  : 
'  Who  He  was,  and  from  whom  He  came,  and  at  what 
price  He  redeemed  thee,  and  why  He  made  thee  and 
gave  thee  all  things,  do  thou  consider.'  *  *  *  The 
mosaic  of  the  first  dome,  which  is  over  the  head  of  the 
spectator  as  soon  as  he  has  entered  by  the  great  door 
(that  door  being  the  type  of  baptism),  represents  the 
effusion  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  as  the  first  consequence  and 
seal  of  the  entrance  into  the  Church  of  God.  *  *  * 
On  the  vaults  at  the  four  angles  which  support  the 
cupola,  are  pictured  four  angels,  each  bearing  a  tablet 
upon  the  end  of  a  rod  in  his  hand  :  on  each  of  the 
tablets  of  the  first  three  angels  is  inscribed  the  word 
'  Holy  ;'  on  that  of  the  fourth  is  written  '  Lord  ;'  and  the 
beginning  of  the  hymn  being  thus  put  into  the  mouths  of 
the  four  angels,  the  words  of  it  are  continued  around  the 
border  of  the  dome,  uniting  praise  to  God  for  the  gift  of 
the  Spirit,  with  welcome  to  the  redeemed  soul  received 
into  His  Church  :  '  Holy,  Holy,  Holy,  Lord  God  of 
Sabaoth  :  Heaven  and  earth  are  full  of  Thy  glory. 
Hosanna  in  the  highest  :  Blessed  is  he  that  cometh  in 
the  name  of  the  Lord.'  And  observe  in  this  writing 
that  the  convert  is  required  to  regard  the  outpouring 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  especially  as  a  work  of  sanctification. 
It  is  the  holiness  of  God  manifested  in  the  giving  of  His 
Spirit  to  sanctify  those  who  had  become  His  children, 
which   the     our    angels    celebrate    in   their    ceaseless 


312     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

praise  ;  and  it  is  on  account  of  this  holiness  that  the 
heaven  and  earth  are  said  to  be  full  of  Mis  glory, 

"  After  thus  hearing  praise  rendered  to  God  by  the 
angels  for  the  salvation  of  the  newly-entered  soul,  it 
was  thought  fittest  that  the  worshipper  should  be  led 
to  contemplate,  in  the  most  comprehensive  forms  pos- 
sible, the  past  evidence  and  the  future  hopes  of  Chris- 
tianity, as  summed  up  in  three  facts,  without  assurance 
of  which  all  faith  is  vain  ;  namely,  that  Christ  died,  that 
He  rose  again,  and  that  He  ascended  into  Heaven, 
there  to  prepare  a  place  for  His  elect.  On  the  vault 
between  the  first  and  second  cupolas  are  represented 
the  crucifixion  and  resurrection  of  Christ,  with  the 
usual  series  of  intermediate  scenes.  *  *  *  The 
second  cupola  itself,  which  is  the  central  and  principal 
one  of  the  Church,  is  entirely  occupied  by  the  subject 
of  the  Ascension.  At  the  highest  point  of  it,  Christ  is 
represented  as  rising  into  the  blue  heaven,  borne  up  by 
four  angels,  and  throned  upon  a  rainbow,  the  type  of 
reconciliation.  Beneath  Him  the  twelve  Apostles  are 
seen  upon  the  Mount  of  Olives  with  the  Madonna,  and, 
in  the  midst  of  them,  the  two  men  in  white  apparel  who 
appeared  at  the  moment  of  the  Ascension,  above  whom, 
as  uttered  by  them,  are  inscribed  the  words,  '  Ye  men 
of  Galilee,  why  stand  ye  gazing  up  into  heaven  .-'  This 
Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  as  He  is  taken  from  you,  shall 
so  come,  the  arbiter  of  the  earth,  trusted  to  do  judg- 
ment and  justice.'  *  *  *  The  third  cupola,  that 
over  the  altar,  represents  the  witness  of  the  Old  Testa- 


From  Constantme  to  the  Reformation.     313 

ment  to  Christ  ;  showing  Him  enthroned  in  its  centre, 
and  surrounded  by  the  patriarchs  and  prophets,  *  *  * 
If  [the  worshipper]  had  time  to  explore  the  minor 
lateral  chapels  and  cupolas,  he  could  find  in  them  the 
whole  series  of  New  Testament  History,  the  events  of 
the  life  of  Christ,  and  the  Apostolic  Miracles  in  their 
order,  and  finally  the  scenery  of  the  Book  of  Revela- 
tion ;  but  if  he  only  entered,  as  often  the  common 
people  do  to  this  hour,  snatching  a  few  moments  before 
beginning  the  labor  of  the  day  to  offer  up  an  ejaculatory 
prayer,  and  advanced  but  from  the  main  entrance  as  far 
as  the  altar  screen,  all  the  splendor  of  the  glittering 
nave  and  variegated  dome,  if  they  smote  upon  his  heart, 
as  they  might  often,  in  strange  contrast  with  his  reed 
cabin  among  the  shallows  of  the  lagoon,  smote  upon  it 
only  that  they  might  proclaim  the  two  great  messages 
— '  Christ  is  risen,'  and  '  Christ  shall  come.'  *  *  * 
And  this  thought  may  surely  dispose  the  reader  to  look 
with  some  change  of  temper  upon  the  gorgeous  build- 
ing and  wild  blazonry  of  that  shrine  of  St.  Mark's.  He 
now  perceives  that  it  was,  in  the  hearts  of  that  old 
Venetian  people,  far  more  than  a  place  of  worship.  It 
was  at  once  a  type  of  the  Redeemed  Church  of  God, 
and  a  scroll  for  the  written  word  of  God.  It  was  to  be 
to  them,  both  an  image  of  the  bride,  all  glorious  within, 
her  clothing  of  wrought  gold  ;  and  the  actual  table  of 
the  Law  and  Testimony,  written  within  and  without. 
And  whether  honored  as  the  Church  or  as  the  Bible, 
was  it  not  fitting  that  neither  the  gold  nor  the  crystal 


314    C hristendoni  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

should  be  spared  in  the  adornment  of  it  ;  that  as  the 
symbol  of  the  bride,  the  building  of  the  wall  thereof 
should  be  of  jasper,  and  the  foundations  of  it  garnished 
with  all  manner  of  precious  stones  ;  and  that,  as  the 
channel  of  the  Word,  that  triumphant  utterance  of  the 
Psalmist  should  be  true  of  it — '  I  have  rejoiced  in  the 
way  of  Thy  testimonies,  as  much  as  in  all  riches.'  " 

Now  it  is  not  only  that  this  is  Scriptural  teaching — 
that  the  mosaics  of  St.  Mark's  are  founded  upon  the 
Bible,  but  that  to  conceive  and  carry  out  such  a  design 
in  all  its  parts,  implied  not  only  a  desire  to  honor  the 
Bible  and  to  make  it  known  to  people  who  could  not 
read,  but  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  Bible  on  the 
part  of  those  who  did  this  work  and  a  Bible  Christianity 
in  the  age  itself.  This  is  the  secret  of  that  wondrous 
multiplicity  of  decoration  in  the  cathedrals  of  the  great 
Gothic  period.  What  was  that  decoration  .''  It  was, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  "  the  religion  of  Protestants" — 
"the  Bible  and  the  Bible  only."  Read  Mr.  Ruskin's 
analysis  of  the  west  front  of  Amiens  Cathedral  in  his 
latest  little  book,  "Our  Fathers  have  told  Us,"  and  you 
must  be  astonished  at  the  profound  knowledge  of  the 
Bible  manifested  in  the  composition  and  arrangement 
of  the  sculptures.  Or  study  the  west  front  of  Wells 
Cathedral,  or  many  another  cathedral  which  the  tourist 
will  remember.  I  find  among  my  notes  the  following 
from  Didron's  Christian  Iconography,  concerning  the 
sculptures  on  the  exterior  of  Chartrcs  Cathedral  : 
"Seventy-five  figures  represent  the  Creation,  the  life  in 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     315 

Paradise,  and  the  fall  of  Adam  and  Eve  ;  one  hundred 
and  three,  the  various  labors  by  which,  as  the  result  of 
the  fall,  mankind  eat  their  bread  in  the  sweat  of  their 
brow ;  one  hundred  and  forty-eight,  the  virtues  he 
should  practise  and  the  vices  he  should  shun  ;  while 
fourteen  hundred  and  eighty-eight  depict  the  history  of 
the  world,  through  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New, 
and  the  period  succeeding  the  New,  the  series  ending 
with  the  solemn  scene  of  the  Last  Judgment" — a  total 
of  eighteen  hundred  and  fourteen  sculptures,  intended 
to  teach  the  people,  not  saint-worship  nor  image- 
worship,  nor  any  other  "mediaeval  superstition,"*  but 
the  truths  of  God's  revelation  and  man's  duty  and 
responsibility.t 


*  Mr.  Ruskin,  "  Our  Fatheu  have  told  Us,"  p.  136,  remarks  on  the  ab- 
sence of  representations  of  Purgatory  in  the  art  of  tliis  period  :  "At  what 
time  the  doctrine  of  Purgatory  was  openly  accepted  by  Catholic  doctors  I 
neither  know,  nor  care  to  know.  It  was  first  formalized  by  Dante,  but 
never  accepted  for  an  instant  by  the  sacred  artist-teachers  of  his  time — or 
by  those  of  any  great  school  or  time  whatsoever." 

f  "  What  distinguishes  it  [the  Cathedral  of  Orvieto]  from  all  others, 
and  makes  it  worth  a  long  pilgrimage  to  see,  are  the  pictures  in  brilliant 
mosaics,  which  cover  nearly  the  whole  fajade.  If  you  want  to  know 
what  they  are,  I  can  only  say,  '  Go  read  your  Bible  through.'  " — Charles 
Dudley  Warner,  Roundabout  Journey,  p.  75. 

The  difference  in  biblical  knowledge  and  feeling  between  the  earlier 
and  later  painters — those  who  wrought  before  the  Church  had  been  cor- 
rupted by  the  Papacy,  and  those  who  wrought  after — is  thus  shown  by  Mr. 
Ruskin  in  a  comparison  of  the  figure  of  Christ  in  Orcagna's  Last  Judgment 
in  the  Campo  Santo  at  Pisa,  and  in  Michael  Angelo's  Last  Judgment  in 
the  Sistine  Chapel  at  Rome.  After  saying  that  Michael  Angelo  borrowed 
the  gesture  of  Christ  from  Orcagna,  he  shows  how  he  failed  of  the  mean- 
ing which  the  earlier  painter  put  into  it.  "You  all  remember  the  action 
of  Michael  Angelo's  Christ,  the  right  hand  raised  as  if  in  violence  of  rep- 


3 1 6    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

This,  then,  was  the  state  of  the  Church,  and  its  credit 
with  the  laity  before  the  Hildebrandine  theory  had 
completely  permeated  it.  After  that  it  was  different. 
It  is  a  fact  written  broad  and  large  upon  the  face  of 
history,  that  the  corruptions  of  the  Church  against 
which  men  rebelled  at  the  Reformation — those  which 
weighed  upon  them  with  crushing  force — those  which 
were  an  offence  to  their  conscience  and  their  reason, 
and  a  stumbling  block  to  their  faith — those  which  made 
the  Church  itself,  formerly  so  loved  and  honored,  to 
have  become  hateful  to  mankind — were  the  direct  effects 
of  the  Papal  theory  carried  out  into  practice.  The 
mistakes  of  scholastic  theologians  in  philosophizing 
upon  doctrine,  the  popular  superstitions  of  the  common 
people,  these  would  have  corrected  themselves  through 
the  natural  and  educated  progress  of  the  human  mind, 
had  not  the  self-regulating  action  of  the  Church  been 
fettered  by  the  abnormal  and  malign  influence  of  the 

robation  ;  and  the  left  closed  across  His  breast,  as  refusing  all  mercy. 
The  action  is  one  which  apj^cals  to  persons  of  very  ordinary  sensations, 
and  is  very  naturally  adopted  by  the  Renaissance  painter,  both  for  its 
popular  effect,  and  its  capabilities  for  the  exhibition  of  his  surgical  science. 
But  the  old  painter-theologian,  though  indeed  he  showed  the  right  hand 
of  Christ  lifted,  and  the  left  hand  laid  across  His  breast,  had  another 
meaning  in  the  actions.  The  fingers  of  the  left  hand  are  folded  in  both 
the  figures  ;  but  in  Michael  Angelo's  as  if  putting  aside  an  apjieal  ;  in 
Orcagna's,  the  fingers  are  bent  to  draw  Ijack  the  drapery  from  the  right 
side.  The  right  hand  is  raised  by  Michael  Angelo  as  in  anger  ;  by 
Orcagna,  only  to  show  the  wounded  pahn.  And  as  to  the  believing  dis- 
ciples. He  showed  them  His  hands  and  His  side,  so  tliat  they  were  glad 
— so  to  the  unbelievers  at  their  judgment,  He  shows  the  wounds  in  hands 
and  side.  '  They  shall  look  on  Him  whom  they  pierced.^  " — Val  d'Arno, 
p.  122. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      317 

Papacy,  during-  the  course  of  its  dishonorable  history 
from  Innocent  IV.  to  Leo  X.  Not  only  were  nations 
thrown  into  disorder  by  the  claim  of  the  supreme  polit- 
ical power  ;  but  the  churches  were  thrown  into  still 
greater  disorder  by  the  claim  asserted  and  assented  to 
of  supreme  spiritual  power. 

But  the  Reformation  was  only  the  last  act  of  the 
reaction  against  these  exorbitant  claims.  The  first  was 
the  reaction  against  the  political  usurpations  of  the 
Popes.  Less  than  a  century  intervened  between  Inno- 
cent III.  and  Clement  V.;  but  in  that  time  the  Papacy 
descended  from  the  height  of  political  power  to  the 
depths  of  political  subserviency.  Innocent  III.  died  in 
1216;  Innocent  IV.  reigned  from  1243  to  1254;  Boni- 
face VIII.,  the  last  of  the  Hildebrandines,  from  1294  to 
1303  ;  in  1305,  Clement  V.  was  made  Pope  by  the  in- 
fluence of  Philip  the  Fair  of  France  ;  he  removed  the 
Papacy  to  Avignon,  and  the  "Babylonish  Captivity" 
began.  The  Pope  was  the  political  slave  of  the  King 
of  France. 

I  think  the  real  cause  of  this  revolution  has  not  been 
noted  by  the  historians.  It  was,  in  my  judgment,  the 
increasing  political  importance  of  The  People,  and  their 
loyalty  to  the  Nation,  the  National  Church,  and  the 
Sovereign,  as  against  the  elements  which  were  ready  to 
disturb  the  public  peace  for  their  own  selfish  purposes — 
that  is,  against  the  rebellious  aristocracy,  and  the  all- 
grasping  Papacy.  The  appearance  of  the  Communes,  or 
Commons,  as  an  influential  element  in  the  national  life 


3 1 8    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

of  Europe  at  this  time,  is  an  important  fact  in  ecclesias- 
tical as  well  as  political  history,  and  merits  more  atten- 
tion in  this  connection  than  it  has  received.  I  have 
endeavored  to  show  that  the  Church  did  its  duty  to  the 
people  in  the  period  with  which  we  have  been  dealing, 
and  that  the  people  repaid  its  care  with  the  love  and 
loyalty  of  which  the  great  cathedrals  are  the  monuments. 
That  love  and  loyalty  were  given  to  the  national  and 
local  Church,  and  were  not  withdrawn  from  it  until  the 
Papal  interferences  with  order  and  discipline,  by  exemp- 
tions, appeals,  extortions,  provisions,  intrusions,  reser- 
vations, pluralities,  expectatives,  and  all  the  iniquities 
of  the  non-obstante  clause  had  broken  down  its  moral 
and  spiritual  power,  and  made  it  (as  Matthew  Paris  has 
it)  a  slave  of  the  Papacy  and  a  table  of  money-changers. 
In  the  political  world  the  evil  consequences  of  the  Papal 
interference  were  manifest  before  they  appeared  in  the 
Church  ;  and  therefore  the  people  strengthened  the 
hands  of  the  kings  to  resist  it.  When  Philip  the  Fair 
was  at  the  height  of  his  quarrel  with  Pope  Boniface  VIII., 
he  assembled  for  the  first  time  the  States-General  of 
France,  and  summoned  to  it,  not  only  the  prelates  and 
the  nobles,  but  also  the  "  Third  Estate,"  the  represent- 
atives of  the  Communes,  the  towns  and  cities  which 
lived  by  trade.  The  fact  is  significant  and  tells  its  own 
story.  The  loyalty  of  these  towns  and  cities  was  the 
lever  by  which  the  royal  power  was  raised  to  supremacy 
over  the  aristocracy.  They  found  it  to  their  interest  to 
be  protected  by  royal  charters;  they  throve  by  the  pres- 


From  Conslantme  to  the  Reformation.     319 

ervation  of  the  king's  peace  ;  they  required  for  their 
prosperity  safe  roads  and  security  against  the  plunder  of 
their  goods  in  transit  from  place  to  place  ;  they  were 
therefore  hostile  to  robber-barons,  and  loth  to  assist  in 
stirring  up  civil  war,  and  for  these  reasons  they  were 
ready  to  help  the  king  against  rebellion  or  aggression.* 
They  were  therefore  in  no  mood  to  have  the  kingdom 
thrown  into  disorder  for  the  political  benefit  of  the 
Papacy,  or  to  be  blind  tools  of  Papal  animosity  or  am- 
bition or  rapacity. 

The  history  of  popular  institutions  in  the  Middle  Ages 
is  very  interesting,  and  I  regret  that  my  knowledge  of 
it  is  only  superficial.  The  towns  and  cities  began  to  be 
of  importance  at  the  time  of  the  revival  of  Europe  after 
the  Carlovingian  period.  But  their  development  was 
different  in  the  different  nations.  In  Italy  a  revival  of 
the  old  municipal  life  begins  to  be  discernible  in  the 
ninth  century,t  and  the  cities  made  rapid  progress  from 
that  time  on.  But  unfortunately  Italian  pride  was 
averse  to  dependence  on  the  German  Empire,  and  the 
Papacy  could  not  endure  an  Italian  Kingdom  ;  the  result 
therefore  of  their  struggles  was  the  disintegration  of 
Italy,  the  feuds  of  Guelph  and  Ghibelline,  the  attempt 
to  build  up  each  city  into  a  little  republic  on  the  model 
of  ancient  Rome,  constant  wars  between  the  cities  them- 
selves, or  against  the  Emperor  or  the  Pope,  and  finally 

*  I  think  a  connection  can  be  traced  between  the  "  Truce  of  God  "  and 
"  the  King's  peace."     See  the  last  Lecture, 
f  Sismondi,  Italian  Republics,  p.  32. 


320    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

the  subjection  of  each  city  to  its  tyrant  noble.  In  Ger- 
many, towns  were  fortified,  as  a  part  of  the  miHtary 
policy  of  Henry  the  Fowler,  and  as  they  increased  in 
trade  and  wealth  the  chief  of  them  became  free  cities  of 
the  Empire,  and  had  their  place  in  the  German  Diet. 
They  were  loyal  to  Henry  IV.  in  his  struggle  with  the 
Papacy  and  his  rebellious  vassals,  and  a  source  of 
strength  to  Frederick  Barbarossa.  In  France  the  rise 
of  the  Third  Estate  is  said  to  begin  with  the  patriotic 
efforts  of  the  clergy  to  assist  Louis  VI.  (i  108-37)  against 
the  robber-barons,  by  arming  their  vassals,  who  marched 
under  the  lead  of  their  parish  priests.  In  the  south  of 
what  is  now  France,  there  were  many  of  the  old  muni- 
cipalities remaining;  of  the  new  towns  some  were  volun- 
tarily granted  charters  by  their  lords,  who,  however, 
appointed  their  governors  and  officers  ;  others  obtained 
by  successful  struggles,  not  only  franchises,  but  the 
privilege  of  self-government  by  magistrates  of  their  own 
choosing.  All  these  found  it  to  their  account  to  draw 
closer  to  the  king,  to  fortify  their  liberties  by  his  char- 
ters, and  to  render  him  service  in  return  for  his 
protection  ;  and  thus  they  built  up  the  nation.  In 
England,  the  increase  of  trade  gave  prosperity  to  the 
towns,  and  as  they  obtained  importance  they  sought  to 
have  their  liberties  secured  by  royal  charters.  William 
the  Conqueror's  letter  to  the  city  of  London  is  short 
and  to  the  point  :  "William  the  king  greets  William 
the  bishop,  and  Gosfrith  the  port-reeve,  and  all  the 
burghers  of  London,  French  and  English  friendly  :  and 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     321 

I  do  you  to  wit  that  I  will  that  ye  twain  be  worthy  of 
all  the  law  that  ye  were  worthy  of  in  King  Edward's  day. 
And  I  will  that  every  child  be  his  father's  heir  after  his 
father's  day  ;  and  I  will  not  endure  that  any  man  offer 
any  wrong  to  you.     God  keep  you."* 

By  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century,  the  Commons 
had  become  so  important  an  element  of  the  body  politic, 
that  they  began  from  that  time  to  be  called  to  the  great 
assembly  or  parliament  of  the  nation.  The  representa- 
tives of  the  towns  were  called  to  the  Cortes  of  Aragon 
in  1 162,  to  that  of  Castile  in  1 169.  The  Emperor  Fred- 
erick II.,  who,  as  King  of  Sicily,  promulgated  a  consti- 
tution which  is  said  to  be  an  anticipation  of  modern 
political  enlightenment  in  the  liberality  of  its  provisions, 
called  the  deputies  of  the  cities  to  his  General  Court  in 
1232.  In  1254  the  Commons  were  first  summoned  to 
the  English  Parliament.  The  deputies  of  the  cities  first 
made  their  appearance  in  the  German  Imperial  Diet  in 
1255.  And  in  1302  the  "Third  Estate"  was,  as  I  said, 
called  to  the  French  States-General,  to  hear  the  com- 
plaints of  the  King  of  France  against  Boniface  VIII. 
Notwithstanding  the  absolutism  of  Innocent  III.,  I  think 
we  may  mark  his  pontificate  (1198-1215)  as  the  epoch 
when  the  increased  activity,  intelligence  and  wealth  of 
the  Commons,  as  the  English  call  them,  of  the  people, 
as  we  call  them,  began  to  foreshow  a  new  order  of  affairs. 
If  you  look,  in  the  fourth  volume  of  Guizot's  History  of 

*Stubbs,  Constitutional  History  of  England,  I.,  p.  404. 
21 


32  2    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

Modern  Civilization,  at  the  list  of  charters  granted  to 
the  communes  by  the  kings  of  France  from  Henry  I.  to 
Charles  IV.,  you  will  notice  that  those  granted  by  Philip 
Augustus,  the  contemporary  of  Innocent  III.,  are  many 
more  in  number  than  those  of  any  king  before  or  after 
— a  very  significant  fact  in  this  connection.  It  was  Philip 
Augustus  who  chartered  the  University  of  Paris  in  the 
year  1200 — the  rise  of  the  great  universities  marking  the 
time  when  learning  was  spreading  among  the  laity.  In 
a  short  time  we  shall  see  the  lawyers  taking  their  place 
by  the  side  of  the  theologians  as  a  learned  profession. 
You  remember  also  that  it  was  at  this  time  that  the 
English  people  secured  their  liberties  by  the  Great 
Charter,  and  that  they  held  to  it,  although  Innocent  III. 
annulled  it  by  a  Papal  bull,  suspended  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  and  excommunicated  the  barons.  It  was 
a  natural  result  of  increased  activity  in  the  cities  where 
there  were  many  resident  foreigners,  and  much  foreign 
trade,  that  lax  ideas  should  prevail,  and  that  there  should 
be  some  loose  and  luxurious  living.  In  the  County  of 
Toulouse  the  cities  were  justly  open  to  this  censure  ; 
heresy  was  undoubtedly  rife  among  them  ;  but  the 
Albigensian  Crusades,  I  doubt  not,  were  in  part  at  least 
urged  on  by  the  fears  of  Innocent  III.  of  the  effects  of 
the  great  popular  movement  of  which  he  could  not  be 
ignorant.  A  more  praiseworthy  result  of  the  insight 
into  the  signs  of  the  times  was  the  establishment  of  the 
two  great  orders  of  mendicant  friars,  that  of  St.  Francis 
and  that  of  St.  Dominic,  whose  vow  of  absolute  poverty, 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     323 

even  to  beggary,  compelled  them,  for  the  supply  of  their 
daily  necessities,  to  be  in  daily  contact  with  the  common 
people,  and  whose  activity  at  first  in  missionary  work 
was  as  noble  as  their  deterioration  was  rapid,  when  they 
became  the  army  of  the  Papacy  and  the  instruments  of 
its  extortions.  All  these  phenomena  occurring  just  at 
this  time,  point  out,  in  my  view,  the  pontificate  of  Inno- 
cent III.  as  the  precise  time  when  the  power  and 
influence  of  the  people  became  an  important  factor  in 
the  political  life  of  Europe.  And  from  the  time  of 
Innocent  III.,  the  political  power  of  the  Papacy  began 
to  decline. 

For,  as  I  have  remarked,  the  people  were  at  this  time 
naturally  on  the  side  of  the  kings,  as  against  the  selfish 
and  rapacious  nobility,  who  did  them  so  much  harm  in 
pursuing  their  right  of  private  war,  and  in  other  ways  ; 
and  they  speedily  found  that  it  was  not  to  their  interest 
to  permit  the  sovereign  to  be  weakened  for  the  benefit 
of  the  Papacy.  They  therefore  instinctively  sustained 
the  national  cause  against  the  Popes.  Even  as  early 
as  the  time  of  Henry  IV.  of  Germany,  the  cities  adhered 
to  the  Emperor,  and  the  common  people  revered  him 
as  a  saint  after  his  death.  The  success  of  Alexander 
III.,  such  as  it  was,  against  Frederick  Barbarossa,  was 
possible  only  because  the  Italian  cities  were  determ.ined 
to  shake  off  the  German  yoke — because  it  was  impossi- 
ble for  Germany  and  Italy  to  form  one  nation.  The 
long  struggle  of  Frederick  II.  against  Gregory  IX.  and 
Innocent  IV.  is  remarkable  for  the  appeals  to  the  peo- 


324    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

pie  on  both  sides.  On  the  one  side  the  mendicant  friars 
filled  the  world  with  denunciations  of  the  Emperor  ;  on 
the  other  side,  the  Emperor  issued  manifesto  after  mani- 
festo against  the  Pope.  And  notwithstanding  the  in- 
tense partisanship  of  Guelph  against  Ghibelline  in  Italy, 
the  Emperor  held  his  own.  So  again,  the  answer  of 
Philip  the  Fair  of  France  to  the  famous  bulls  of  Boniface 
VIII.,  Ausculta  fill  zwdi  Unam  Sanctam  was  to  convoke 
the  States-General,  and  by  their  aid  and  counsel  to  bid 
defiance  to  the  Pope.  When  the  national  feeling  of  the 
people  had  attained  strength  and  consistency,  the 
political  supremacy  of  the  Papacy  passed  away.  That 
is  the  real  meaning  of  the  so-called  Babylonish  Cap- 
tivity at  Avignon. 

Let  us  now  see  how  the  Papal  claim  of  supreme 
spiritual  authority  affected  the  national  Churches. 
Much  has  been  written  concerning  the  usurpation,  ex- 
tortions, and  corrupt  practices  of  the  Popes  in  the 
period  immediately  preceding  the  Reformation  ;  but  I 
have  not  seen  any  systematic  attempt  to  estimate  their 
effect  upon  morals  and  religion  generally.  My  propo- 
sition is,  that  the  alienation  of  the  people  from  their 
National  Churches  at  the  Reformation  was  due  primarily 
to  that  interference  of  the  Papacy  with  them,  resulting 
inevitably  from  the  Hildebrandine  theory  of  the  Papacy 
itself,  which  obstructed  their  normal  working,  which 
hindered  their  adaptation  of  themselves  to  the  state  of 
Europe  in  a  period  of  rapid  development,  and  which  to 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      325 

a  large  extent   destroyed   their  influence    in   favor  of 
sound  morals  and  true  religion. 

It  happened  most  unfortunately  for  the  Church,  that 
just  at  the  time  the  people  were  obtaining  political  in- 
fluence, the  clergy,  by  the  progress  of  the  Hildebrandine 
idea,  were  more  and  more  withdrawn  from  sympathy 
and  intercourse  with  them.  Alexander  III.,  we  have 
seen,  confined  the  election  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome  to 
the  College  of  Cardinals  exclusively.  That  provision 
became  the  pattern  for  the  Cathedral  Chapters  to 
follow  in  electing  the  bishops.  The  effect  was  bad 
both  on  the  Popes  and  on  the  bishops.  The  intrigues 
of  the  cardinals  among  themselves  led  to  the  worst  re- 
sults. The  chapters  made  terms  with  the  candidates, 
and  extorted  concessions  from  them  which  were  fatal 
to  discipline,  so  that  the  bishop  had  less  power  in  his 
own  cathedral  than  in  any  other  church  in  his  diocese. 
At  the  same  time,  as  the  laity  had  no  approval  of  the 
choice  made  by  the  chapters,  either  immediately  by 
that  public  assent  which  had  obtained  in  earlier  ages, 
or  indirectly  by  the  royal  confirmation,*  they  looked 
upon  their  bishop  as  a  stranger,  and  he  became  alienated 
from  them.  Again,  the  privilege  called  "benefit  of 
clergy,"  which,  in  accordance  with  the  Hildebrandine 
scheme,  withdrew  the  minor  orders,  as  well  as  the 
priests  from  fhe  jurisdiction  of  the  secular  courts,  and 
secured  them  virtual  immunity  for  crimes  which  would 

*  In  England  the  conge  tfelire  is  the  mode  in  which  lay  influence  exerts 
itself  in  the  election  of  bishops. 


326     Chr{stendo7n  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

be  severely  punished  in  the  layman,  not  only  assisted 
in  lowering  the  morals  of  the  clergy,  and  provoking  the 
envy  or  enmity  of  the  laity,  but  excluded  the  clergy 
from  the  general  movement  of  the  people  towards  a 
true  national  feeling.  When  we  remember  what  a  wise 
ruler  and  guardian  of  the  kingdom  of  France,  the  abbot 
Suger  of  St,  Denys  was,  in  the  absence  of  Louis  VII,  on 
the  Crusade,  it  marks  a  great  change  in  the  relation  of 
the  clergy  to  the  kingdom,  to  find  an  ordinance  of 
Philip  the  Fair  in  1287  requiring  all  who  possess  tem- 
poral jurisdiction  in  the  kingdom,  as  dukes,  counts, 
archbishops,  bishops,  abbots,  and  the  like,  to  institute 
for  the  exercise  of  such  jurisdiction,  bailiffs,  provosts, 
and  lay-sergeants,  who  are  not  clerics,  "  to  the  end 
that  if  the  said  officers  should  happen  to  fail,  their 
superiors  may  proceed  against  them  "* — which  they 
could  not  do,  if  they  could  plead  "  benefit  of  clergy." 
The  same  ordinance  prohibited  any  but  lay-attorneys 
practising  in  the  courts  of  France — a  very  proper  pro- 
vision, according  to  our  ideas,  but  severely  reflecting 
upon  the  clergy  of  that  day,  as  wanting  in  loyalty  ;  for 
that  was  the  real  reason. 

The  general  complaint  against  the  extortions  and 
evil  practices  of  the  Papal  legates  a  latere  is  a  common- 
place of  history,  and  I  need  not  enlarge  upon  it. 

Much  has  been  written  of  the  political,  social  and 
commercial    effect    of    the    Crusades    upon    Western 

♦Guizot,  History  Civilization,  IV.,  p,  173. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     327 

Europe,  less  of  their  religious  effect.  I  have  here  to 
note  two  consequences  of  the  Papal  connection  with 
them,  the  influence  of  which  upon  the  subsequent  moral 
and  religious  condition  of  Europe  was  most  disastrous. 
The  first  was  the  offence  given  to  the  conscience  of 
Europe  by  Papal  excommunications  for  purely  political 
reasons,  and  the  proclamation  of  a  Crusade  or  "  Holy 
War  "  against  the  prince  so  excommunicated  for  politi- 
cal reasons.  We  have  naturally  some  sympathy  with 
the  effort  to  rescue  the  Holy  Land,  the  scene  of  the 
sacred  events  of  our  redemption,  from  the  hands  of  the 
unbelievers  ;  but  to  call  the  purely  political  and  personal 
war  of  Gregory  IX.  and  Innocent  IV.  on  the  Emperor 
Frederick  II.  a  crusade,  offended  the  conscience  of  St. 
Louis,  and  it  offends  the  conscience  of  every  reasonable 
being.  There  is  nothing  more  iniquitous  in  all  history 
than  the  "Holy  War"  of  Charles  of  Anjou,  at  the  in- 
stigation of  the  Pope,  upon  the  descendants  of  Fred- 
erick. The  ruin  of  Manfred,  the  murder  of  the  youthful 
and  gallant  Conradin,  and  the  oppressions  of  the 
French  conquerors  of  Naples  and  Sicily  justify,  if  any 
political  outbreak  ever  was  justified,  the  *'  Sicilian 
Vespers."  Religion  could  not  but  suffer,  when  the 
dealings  of  the  Popes  with  the  kingdoms  of  the  world 
were,  in  intent  and  will,  such  as  wrought  the  ruin  of  the 
House  of  Hohenstauffen. 

This  demand  of  the  Popes  upon  the  allegiance  of 
their  adherents,  requiring  them  to  consecrate  their 
swords  in  "  Holy  Wars,"  whenever  the  Papal  policy  re- 


328     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

quired  the  ruin  of  a  prince,  introduced  into  Europe  a 
peculiar  and  fanatical  temper,  warlike  and  inquisitorial, 
the  direct  antagonist  of  the  spirit  of  the  Gospel,  and 
which,  fostered  in  its  self-delusion  by  the  promise  of 
plenary  indulgence,  enabled  men  to  commit  crime  with 
the  full  assurance  that  they  were  pleasing  God  and 
meriting  eternal  salvation.  What  manner  of  man  was 
this  Charles  of  Anjou,  who  was  the  instrument  of  Papal 
vengeance  upon  Manfred  and  Conradin  ?  You  get  no 
clear  idea  of  him  from  Milman,  or  Gibbon,  or  Robertson, 
and  therefore  you  will  thank  me  for  calling  your  atten- 
tion to  this  estimate  of  him  by  Ruskin,  which  I  believe 
to  be  strictly  true,  and  which  will  help  you  to  enter 
into  the  spirit  of  Guelphism  as  opposed  to  Ghibellinism, 
better  than  any  words  I  know.  First,  however,  let  me 
give  a  few  preparatory  words,  also  from  Ruskin,  by 
way  of  preface,  premising  that  he  is  speaking  ironically 
from  the  Papal  stand-point,  when  he  identifies  Guelph 
with  Christian,  and  Ghibelline  with  infidel.  "Of  the 
character  of  their  enemy,  Charles  of  Anjou,"  he  says, 
"  there  will  remain  on  your  minds,  after  careful  exami- 
nation of  his  conduct,  only  the  doubt  whether  I  am 
justified  in  speaking  of  him  as  Christian  against  infidel. 
But  you  will  cease  to  doubt  this,  when  you  have  entirely 
entered  into  this  nascent  Christianity  of  the  thirteenth 
century.  You  will  find  that  while  men  who  desire  to 
be  virtuous  receive  it  as  the  mother  of  virtues,  men  who 
desire  to  be  criminal  receive  it  as  the  forgiver  of  crimes  ; 
and  that  therefore,  between  Ghibelline  or  infidel  cruelty. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      329 

and  Guelph  or  Christian  cruelty,  there  is  always  this 
difference,  that  the  infidel  cruelty  is  done  in  hot  blood, 
and  the  Christian's  in  cold.  *  *  *  And  among  the 
pieces  of  heraldry  most  significant  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
the  asp  on  the  shield  of  the  Guelphic  viscounts  is  to  be 
much  remembered  by  you  as  a  sign  of  this  merciless 
cruelty  of  mistaken  religion  ;  mistaken,  but  not  in  the 
least  hypocritical.  It  has  perfect  confidence  in  itself, 
and  can  answer  with  serenity  for  all  its  deeds."*  Of 
Charles  of  Anjou,  and  the  manner  of  man  he  was,  Mr. 
Ruskin  gives  this  account  from  Villani,  with  the  com- 
ment that  follows,  of  his  own  :  "  This  Charles  was 
wise  and  of  sane  counsel  ;  and  of  prowess  in  arms,  and 
fierce,  and  much  feared  and  redoubted  by  all  the  kings 
in  the  world — magnanimous  and  of  high  purposes  ; 
fearless  in  the  carrying  forth  of  every  great  enterprise  ; 
firm  in  every  adversity  ;  a  verifier  of  his  every  word ; 
speaking  little,  doing  much  ;  and  scarcely  ever  laughed, 
and  then  but  a  little  ;  sincere  and  without  flaw  as  a 
religious  and  Catholic  person  ;  stern  injustice  and  fierce 
in  look  ;  tall  and  nervous  in  person,  olive  colored  and 
with  a  large  nose,  and  well  he  appeared  a  royal  majesty 
more  than  other  men.  Much  he  watched,  and  little 
he  slept,  and  used  to  say  that  so  much  time  as  one 
slept,  one  lost  ;  generous  to  his  men-at-arms,  but 
covetous  to  acquire  land,  signory  and  coin,  corne  how  it 
would,  to  furnish  his  enterprises  and  wars  ;  in  courtiers, 

*Val  d'Arno,  p.  no. 


330    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  a7id  Political 

servants  of  pleasure,  or  jocular  persons,  he  delighted 
never."  *'  To  this  newly-crowned  and  resolute  king, 
riding  south  from  Rome,"  says  Ruskin,  "  Manfred,  from 
his  vale  of  Nocera  under  Mount  St.  Angelo,  sends  to 
offer  conditions  of  peace.  Jehu,  the  son  of  Nimshi,  is 
not  swifter  of  answer  to  Ahaziah's  messenger,  than  the 
fiery  Christian  king,  in  his  '  What  hast  thou  to  do 
with  peace  ?'  Charles  answers  the  messengers  with  his 
own  lips :  '  Tell  the  Sultan  of  Nocera,  this  day  I  will 
put  him  in  hell,  or  he  shall  put  me  in  paradise.'  Do 
not  think  it  the  speech  of  a  hypocrite.  Charles  was  as 
fully  prepared  for  death  that  day,  as  ever  Scotch  Cov- 
enanter fighting  for  his  holy  league  ;  and  as  sure  that 
death  would  find  him,  if  it  found,  only  to  glorify  and 
bless.  Balfour  of  Burley  against  Claverhouse  is  not 
more  convinced  in  heart  that  he  draws  the  sword  of  the 
Lord  and  of  Gideon.  But  all  the  knightly  pride  of 
Claverhouse  himself  is  knit  together  in  Charles,  with 
fearless  faith  and  religious  wrath.  '  This  Saracen  scum, 
led  by  a  bastard  German — traitor  to  his  creed,  usurper 
among  his  race,  dares  it  look  at  me,  a  Christian  knight 
— a  prince  of  the  House  of  France,  in  the  eyes  }  Tell 
the  Sultan  of  Nocera,  to-day  I  put  him  in  hell,  or  he 
puts  me  in  paradise.'  They  are  not  passionate  words 
neither.  They  are  measured,  resolute,  and  the  fewest 
possible.  He  never  wasted  words,  nor  showed  his 
mind,  but  when  he  meant  it  should  be  known.  *  *  * 
After  fourteen  years  of  misery,  Sicily  sang  her  angry 
vespers,  and  a    Calabrian  admiral  burnt  the   fleet    of 


From  Co7tstantine  to  the  Reformation.      331 

Charles  before  his  eyes,  where  Scylla  rules  her  barking 
Salamis.  But  the  French  king  died  in  prayerful  peace, 
receiving  the  sacrament  with  these  words  of  perfectly 
honest  faith,  as  he  reviewed  his  past  life  :  '  Lord  God, 
as  I  truly  believe  that  you  are  my  Saviour,  so  I  pray 
you  to  have  mercy  on  my  soul  ;  and  as  I  truly  made 
the  conquest  of  Sicily,  more  to  serve  the  Holy  Church 
than  for  my  own  covetousness,  so  I  pray  you  to  pardon 
my  sins,'"* 

Such  was  Charles  of  Anjou,  and  such  also  in  his  way 
was  Simon  de  Montfort,  the  leader  in  the  Albigensian 
Crusade.  Such  was  Guelph  chivalry  and  Papal  religion. 
But  such  was  not  the  chivalry  or  the  religion  of  Charles' 
brother,  St.  Louis,  or  of  the  younger  Simon  de  Mont- 
fort. Read  the  eulogy  of  this  nobleman  in  Matthew 
Paris  :  "  Thus  ended  the  labors  of  that  noble  man  Earl 
Simon,  who  gave  up  not  only  his  property,  but  also  his 
person,  to  defend  the  poor  from  oppression,  and  for  the 
maintenance  of  justice  and  the  rights  of  the  kingdom. "f 

Connected  with  this  Papal  perversion  of  the  Christian 
temper,  was  the  practice  of  declaring  indulgences  to 
the  crusaders,  leading  finally  to  the  sale  of  indulgences, 
and,  through  the  unblushing  effrontery  of  Tetzel,  to 
the  outbreak  of  the  Reformation  in  Germany.     An  in- 


*  Mr.  Ruskin  adds  :  "  You  are  to  note  the  two  clauses  of  this  prayer. 
He  prays  absolute  mercy,  on  account  of  his  faith  in  Christ ;  but  remission 
of  purgatory  in  proportion  to  the  quantity  of  good  works  he  has  done,  or 
meant  to  do,  as  against  evil." — Val  d'Arno,  pp.  113-16. 

f  Matthew  Paris,  III.,  p.  355. 


332     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

dulgence  was  originally  the  remission  of  some  part  of 
the  canonical  penance,  or  the  substitution  for  it,  of 
some  deed  of  charity  or  piety  as  the  evidence  of  sincere 
repentance  ;  it  could  be  assigned  by  any  bishop  to  meet 
the  individual  case.  During  the  Crusades  the  Popes 
took  it  upon  themselves  to  proclaim  a  plenary  or  gen- 
eral indulgence  to  all  who  took  the  cross.  From  this 
beginning  it  was  easy  to  extend  the  principle  to  other 
methods  of  serving  the  Pope  ;  and  finally  to  the  mere 
gift  of  money  to  the  Papal  treasury  ;  and  it  was  just  as 
easy  for  the  ignorant  or  superstitious  layman  to  con- 
sider the  purchase  of  an  indulgence  as  assuring  the 
absolute  pardon  of  sin.  The  bad  effect  of  Tetzel's  in- 
dulgences upon  the  members  of  Luther's  own  parochial 
cure,  in  encouraging  them  in  immorality,  was  the  ex- 
citing cause  of  the  great  German  reformer's  indignant 
protest  against  them. 

The  other  outcome  of  the  Papal  connection  with  the 
Crusa:des  which  I  have  in  mind,  was  the  pretext  they 
afforded  the  Court  of  Rome  of  extorting  money  from 
the  Churches  throughout  Europe.  The  destructive 
influence  of  the  Papal  financial  system  upon  religion 
and  morality  in  general  was  much  more  direct  than 
might  appear  at  first  sight.  It  was  manifest  long 
before  the  sale  of  indulgences  became  the  scandal  of 
the  Church.  Under  date  of  the  year  1254,  the  English 
chronicler,  Matthew  Paris,  gives  this  story:  "In  the 
same  week  in  which  Pope  Innocent  IV.  departed  this 
life,  a  wonderful  vision  was  seen  by  a  certain  cardinal, 


From  Constant ine  to  the  Reformation.     2)ZZ 

whose  name  is  suppressed  for  caution's  sake.  It  ap- 
peared to  him  that  he  was  in  heaven  before  the  Majesty 
of  the  Lord,  who  was  sitting  at  the  judgment  seat,  and 
on  whose  right  hand  stood  the  blessed  Virgin  His 
mother,  whilst  on  His  left  there  appeared  a  woman  of 
noble  person  and  venerable  mien.  The  latter,  with 
arm  extended,  carried  in  her  left  hand  a  kind  of  temple, 
on  the  front  of  which  was  written  in  letters  of  gold, 
•  The  Church.'  Before  the  Divine  Majesty  was  pros- 
trated Innocent  IV.,  who  with  clasped  and  upraised 
hands  and  on  bended  knees,  was  asking  pardon,  not 
judgment.  The  noble  lady,  however,  spoke  against 
him,  saying,  '  Oh  !  just  Judge,  give  judgment  aright,  for 
I  accuse  this  man  on  three  points  :  Firstly,  when  you 
founded  the  Church  on  earth,  you  gifted  it  with  the 
liberties  which  proceeded  from  yourself;  this  man  has 
made  it  a  most  abject  slave.  Secondly,  the  Church 
was  founded  for  the  salvation  of  sinners,  to  gain  over 
the  souls  of  the  wretched  ;  but  he  has  made  it  a  money- 
changer's table.  Thirdly,  the  Church  was  founded  on 
the  firmness  of  faith  ;  but  this  man  has  caused  faith  and 
morals  to  waver,  has  done  away  with  justice,  and  over- 
shadowed truth  :  render  me  therefore  a  just  judgment.' 
Then  said  the  Lord,  *  Go,  and  receive  your  reward 
according  to  your  deserts  ;'  and  thus  he  was  taken 
away."* 

One  of  the  claims  involved  in  the  contest  of  inves- 
titures was  that  of  the  immunity  of  Church  property 

*  Matthew  Paris,  III.,  p.  loi. 


334     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

from  taxation,  or  what  was  in  those  days  equivalent  to 
taxation.  The  sovereigns  of  Europe  succeeded  in 
asserting  their  right  to  the  customary  feudal  dues  from 
those  estates  for  which  the  ecclesiastic  did  homage  ; 
but  the  Popes  claimed  that  extraordinary  imposts  to 
meet  a  national  emergency,  could  be  levied  upon 
Church  property  only  by  their  permission.  The  famous 
"  Saladin  tithe  "  was  imposed  by  Richard  I.  of  England, 
and  Philip  Augustus  of  France,  upon  the  clergy  as  well 
as  the  laity  of  their  respective  kingdoms,  to  fit  out  their 
Crusade.  But  in  1199,  Innocent  III.  imposed,  for  the 
expenses  of  the  Fourth  Crusade,  a  tax  upon  the  Church 
throughout  Europe  of  one  fortieth  of  all  "movables" 
{i.  e.,  personal  property),  to  be  paid  to  his  own  col- 
lectors. The  example  was  not  lost  upon  succeeding 
Popes.  Gregory  IX.  taxed  the  Church  for  his  crusade 
against  Frederick  II.  to  such  good  effect  that  from 
England  alone,  when  Henry  III.,  the  most  subservient 
of  all  her  kings,  was  reigning,  he  is  said  to  have  re- 
ceived the  sum  of  950,000  marks,  equivalent  to  about 
$70,000,000  of  our  money.*  The  exactions  of  Innocent 
IV.  provoked  the  indignation  represented  by  the  story 
of  Matthew  Paris  which  I  have  just  read  to  you.  Urban 
IV.  granted  a  tenth  of  the  revenues  of  the  Church  of 
France  to  fit  out  the  expedition  of  Charles  of  Anjou 
against  Manfred.  These  are  only  examples.  Much  of 
the  money  thus  raised  was  used  by  the  Popes  for  their 

*  Hallam,  Middle  Ages,  p.  296. 


From  Constantine  to  the  Refor7nation.      335 

own  purposes,  and  sometimes  it  was  shared  with  the 
kings  to  secure  their  license  for  these  exactions. 

During  the  residence  of  the  Popes  at  Avignon,  and 
the  Great  Schism  that  followed,  all  possible  means  of 
obtaining  money  from  the  Church  were  resorted  to  by 
the  Papacy.  The  Popes  invaded  the  rights  of  patron- 
age by  which  the  laity  had  some  influence  in  the 
selection  of  the  clergy,  and  openly  sold  the  succession  to 
bishoprics,  canonries,  and  parishes.  In  the  earlier  period, 
Adrian  IV.  had  requested  certain  bishops  to  confer 
vacant  benefices  on  persons  whom  he  nominated.  The 
request  soon  became  a  command,  and  foreigners  who  did 
not  pretend  to  perform  their  duties  drew  revenues  from 
the  Churches  while  engaged  in  the  service  of  the  Pope. 
In  one  way  or  another  the  confirmation  of  the  bishops 
in  their  sees  was  made  difficult,  and  when  the  election 
of  the  chapters  was  questioned  in  the  Papal  court,  the 
Pope  would  set  aside  the  election,  and  provide  a  nomi- 
nee of  his  own.  From  the  nomination  to  the  sale  of 
the  nomination  was  an  easy  step  ;  and  "  provisions  "  as 
they  were  called,  became  a  source  of  revenue  to  the 
Papacy.  Then  the  expectation  of  a  benefice  -not  yet 
vacant  was  sold,  and  sometimes  sold  several  times 
over.  John  XXII.,  the  second  of  the  Avignon  line,  who 
has  the  reputation  of  being  the  most  avaricious  of  the 
Popes,  reserved  to  himself  all  the  bishoprics  in  Chris- 
tendom. The  same  Pope  claimed,  as  the  fee  for  con- 
firming an  appointment,  the  tax  called  annates  or  first 
fruits,  the  first  year's  revenue  entire  of  the  benefice  ; 


2,^,6    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

his  example  became  a  precedent,  so  that  those  who 
received  benefices  entered  upon  them  impoverished. 
In  England  these  exactions  led  to  the  famous  Statutes 
of  Provisors  and  Praemunire,  by  which  those  who 
sought  preferments  from  the  Papal  court  were  outlawed, 
and  the  Church  of  England  was  saved  from  some  of  the 
evil  effects  of  these  usurpations. 

What  must  necessarily  have  been  the  effect  upon  the 
national  Churches  of  the  exactions  of  tenths  for  the 
Papal  wars,  of  the  corrupt  bargains  with  kings  to 
share  these  taxes,  of  the  open  sale  of  the  succession  to 
bishoprics,  canonries  and  benefices  to  non-residents, 
of  reservations,  commendams,  provisions,  pluralities, 
expectatives  and  the  rest,  in  which  men  with  money 
speculated  at  the  Court  of  Rome,  as  men  speculate 
now  in  railway  shares  —  of  exemptions,  of  appeals 
decided  in  favor  of  the  largest  purse,  of  dispensations 
for  the  non-observance  of  solemn  oaths  .-'  It  is  easy  to 
see  that  godly  discipline  could  not  be  maintained  when 
many  of  the  clergy  were  non-residents,  when  foreigners, 
who  were  placed  in  benefices  merely  for  the  sake  of  the 
income,  had  no  sympathy  with  the  people  of  their 
charge,  when  the  Church  itself  was  impoverished  by  the 
exactions  of  the  Papacy,  and  when  men  of  the  character 
to  be  expected  from  these  doings  were  entrusted  with 
the  cure  of  souls.  Men  who  had  to  pay  heavily  to  the 
Papacy  must  endeavor  to  reimburse  themselves  out  of 
the  tenants  of  their  estates,  and  thus  the  Churchmen, 
instead   of  being  as  of  old,   gentle  landlords,  became 


Fro77i  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      'X^'i)! 

oppressive  in  their  exactions,  severe  collectors  of  tithes, 
and  zealous  seekers  of  bequests.  They  thus  obtained, 
and  not  unjustly,  the  reputation  of  avaricious  persons, 
and  the  respect  and  reverence  for  them  fell  off.  Mr. 
Hallam  remarks,  that  while  the  writers  of  the  thirteenth 
and  following  centuries  complain  of  the  Papacy  in 
terms  of  unmeasured  indignation,  the  laity  came  to 
more  universal  conclusions,  and  a  spirit  of  inveterate 
hatred  grew  up  among  them,  not  only  towards  the 
Papal  tyranny,  but  towards  the  whole  system  of  eccle- 
siastical independence.*  Representations  began  to  be 
made  to  the  government  that  the  wealth  of  the  clergy, 
so  much  of  which  was  sent  out  of  the  kingdom,  might 
be  better  employed  in  providing  for  the  national  defence, 
and  thus  the  first  note  of  confiscation  of  Church  property 
was  sounded.  But  discontent  at  the  financial  condition 
of  the  Church  was  not  the  worst.  As  the  reverence  for 
the  clergy  decreased,  the  reverence  for  religion  decreased 
also  ;  immorality  spread  among  the  people,  and  the 
character  of  the  intruded  clergy  was  not  such  as  to  set 
a  good  example.  It  was  not  as  in  former  times,  when 
the  Papacy  was  corrupt,  but  the  Church  was  not  in- 
fected by  it  ;  now  the  evil  influence  of  the  Papacy 
pervaded  the  whole  body  ;  the  nominees  of  corrupt 
Popes  were  everywhere,  and  everywhere  they  carried 
the  morals  of  the  Papacy  into  the  Churches.  There  is 
no   gainsaying   the   fact   that  there  was  an  immense 

*  Hallam,  Middle  Ages,  Ch.  VII. 
22 


338    Christe7idom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

moral  deterioration  in  Europe  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
thirteenth  and  in  the  fourteenth  century,  and  that  the 
Papacy  was  the  cause  of  it.  And  the  worst  of  the  situ- 
ation was  that  the  people  having  obtained  political  in- 
fluence, and  being  able  to  defend  the  nation  from  the 
political  encroachments  of  the  Papacy,  looked  with 
indifference  upon  the  difficulties  of  the  clergy,  resented 
their  exemption  from  the  secular  law,  felt  themselves 
powerless  to  redress  the  grievances  of  the  National 
Churches  so  long  as  the  Papal  authority  was  acknowl- 
edged by  them,  and  so  permitted  matters  to  take  their 
course.  The  withdrawal  of  patronage  from  the  laity, 
the  exclusion  of  the  laity  from  influence  in  the  election 
of  bishops  or  the  nomination  of  parish  priests,  the 
making  the  clergy  a  close  corporation — abrogating  the 
very  principle  of  the  Church's  welfare  as  enunciated  by 
St.  Paul  :  *'  If  one  member  suffer,  all  the  members 
suffer  with  it  ;  if  one  member  rejoice,  all  the  members 
rejoice  with  it " — this  left  the  laity  hopeless  of  correcting 
abuses,  and  therefore  willing  to  profit  by  them,  and 
produced  a  despairing  contempt  of  religion  as  the  guide 
of  human  conduct. 

The  progress  of  the  deterioration  was  helped  forward 
by  the  interference  of  the  Mendicant  Orders,  under  the 
Papal  patronage,  with  the  parochial  and  pastoral  rights 
and  responsibilities  of  the  resident  priesthood.  That 
the  Dominicans  and  Franciscans  originated  in  a  pure 
impulse  of  Christian  zeal  and  devotion  is  not  to  be  de- 
nied.    But  the  change  which  came  over  them  through 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     339 


their  connection  with  the  Papacy  was  rapid  and  radical. 
The  establishment  of  these  orders,  particularly  that  of 
St.  Francis,  shows  the  religious  earnestness  that  existed 
among  the  common  people  at  the  beginning  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  and  undoubtedly  assisted  in  advanc- 
ing it  during  the  first  generation  after  their  foundation. 
You  remember  the  rebuke  which  St.  Dominic  adminis- 
tered to  the  Papal  Legates,  as  they  proceeded  with 
pomp  and  splendor  upon  their  mission  of  converting  the 
Albigenses :  "It  is  not  by  the  display  of  power  and 
pomp,  cavalcades  of  retainers  and  richly-houseled  pal- 
freys, or  by  gorgeous  apparel,  that  the  heretics  win 
proselytes  ;  it  is  by  zealous  preaching,  by  apostolic 
humility,  by  austerity,  by  seeming,  it  is  true,  but  yet 
seeming  holiness.  Zeal  must  be  met  by  zeal,  humility 
by  humility,  false  sanctity  by  real  sanctity,  preaching 
falsehood  by  preaching  truth."  Dominic  was  a  Spaniard, 
a  noble  and  a  priest,  and  therefore  his  order,  though  it 
adopted  the  principle  of  mendicancy  from  the  Francis- 
cans, was  founded  at  first,  more  for  preaching  the 
scholastic  theology  than  its  rival,  and  therefore  the 
Dominicans  are  called  the  "  Friars  Preachers."  The 
order  speedily  obtained  command  of  the  Inquisition  ; 
its  great  master,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  is  the  chief  au- 
thority in  mediaeval  divinity  ;  it  appeals  less  to  our 
sympathy  than  the  order  of  St.  Francis,  though  it  is  free 
from  the  extravagances  of  the  latter.  It  became  not 
only  subservient  to  the  Papacy,  but  the  director  of  the 
Papal  policy  in  theology,  and  was  more  active  than  any 


340    Christe7idom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

other  influence  in  spreading  Papalism  among  the  common 
people.  And  yet  some  of  the  purest  theology  came 
from  the  Dominican  convents.  The  German  mysticism 
found  in  Eckart  and  Tauler  its  best  expression. 

The  lovable,  if  half-insane  visionary,  St.  Francis  oi 
Assisi,  was  the  genuine  expression  of  the  religion  of  the 
people,  exaggerated  indeed,  but  appealing  at  once  to 
the  popular  heart.  Divesting  himself  of  all  property  for 
the  sake  of  Christ,  wedded,  after  the  manner  of  his 
Master,  as  he  thought,  to  "  Holy  Poverty,"  preaching 
and  practising  the  love  of  God,  the  love  of  man,  and  the 
love  of  all  God's  creatures,  his  example  touched  the 
strings  of  the  human  heart  tuned  to  that  key,  in  the 
mediaeval  society  which  we  are  told  was  so  corrupt,  and 
exerted  an  immediate  and  universal  influence.  Now  I 
want  you  to  notice  here  again,  that  notwithstanding  all 
that  may  be  said  against  mediaeval  superstitions,  the 
Christianityof  St.  Francis  and  the  foundation-principles 
of  his  order  were  the  imitation  of  Christ.  Whatever 
may  be  said  of  the  way  in  which  they  endeavored  to 
imitate  Christ,  and  whatever  may  be  said  of  the  order 
at  a  later  period  when  it  was  made  the  instrument  of 
the  Papacy  for  its  own  purposes — the  conception  of 
Christianity  which  the  Church  of  that  age  presented  to 
St  Francis  and  his  associates  and  sympathizers,  was 
that  of  following  Christ  and  Christ  only.  The  wisdom 
of  their  mode  of  following  Christ  may  be  doubted  ;  the 
power  of  propagating  the  initial  enthusiasm  by  the 
machinery  of  an  order  is  negatived  by  its  subsequent 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.      341 

history  ;  but  the  spontaneous  response  of  the  popular 
heart  to  the  challenge  of  St.  Francis  to  be  Christlike  in 
purity  and  love  is  a  phenomenon  as  significant  as  it  is 
honorable.  It  is  said  that  out  of  the  religious  zeal  of 
St.  Francis  came  the  impulse  which  led  to  the  wonder- 
ful revival  of  religious  art  in  Italy,  and  how  Scriptural 
that  is,  let  Mr.  Ruskin  tell  us.  Here  again,  the  impor- 
tant fact  is,  that  the  Franciscans,  being  of  the  people, 
spoke  to  the  people  in  their  own  new  language,  the 
Italian  of  the  age  preceding  Dante — a  language  not  yet 
sufficiently  formed  to  be  literary,  but  so  different  from 
the  old  Latin  as  to  have  made  that  unintelligible. 
When,  in  that  language,  they  proclaimed  the  love  of 
Christ,  the  people  found  that  they  were  teaching  the 
truths  which  the  Church  was  instituted  to  teach,  and 
there  was  no  need  to  break  with  the  Church  to  heed  the 
lesson. 

How  soon  did  the  fine  gold  become  dim  !  The  change 
which  so  speedily  came  over  the  great  mendicant  orders, 
and  more  over  the  Franciscans  than  over  the  other, 
illustrates  by  the  contrast  the  purity  of  the  initial  im- 
pulse. Innocent  III.,  taught  by  the  signs  of  the  times, 
took  the  followers  of  St.  Dominic  and  St.  Francis  under 
the  protection  of  the  Holy  see.  His  successors,  abusing 
their  authority,  and  taking  advantage  of  the  implicit 
obedience  the  mendicants  rendered  them,  employed 
them  to  spread  Papal  principles  among  the  people,  to 
execute  the  Papal  commissions,  to  preach  the  Papal 
crusades,  to  collect  the  Papal  taxes,  to  sell  the  Papal 


342    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

indulgences,  and  to  take  the  managennent  of  the  common 
people  into  their  hands.  The  evil  effects  were  speedily 
seen.  That  great  and  wise  bishop,  Robert  Grosteste  of 
Lincoln,  at  first  hailed  their  labors  with  hearty  approval; 
but  before  his  death  he  was  forced  to  confess  that  the 
friars  had  more  deteriorated  in  forty  years  than  the 
monks  in  four  hundred.  The  sophism  that  corporate 
wealth  was  consistent  with  individual  poverty,  the  moral 
dangers  of  an  irresponsible  itinerancy,  the  wild  legends 
of  the  miracles  of  their  founders,  the  license  and  buf- 
foonery of  their  popular  revivalist  preaching,  the  draft 
on  the  inventive  imagination  for  material  for  their 
addresses,  the  extravagant  claims  made  for  their  order, 
and  for  the  Papacy,  and  the  fact  that  the  more  extrav- 
agant the  claims,  the  more  acceptable  they  were  to  the 
ruling  pontiffs  —  these  deteriorated  the  mendicant 
orders,  and  through  them  deteriorated  the  religion  of 
the  common  people  ;  so  that  whereas  at  the  beginning 
of  the  fourteenth  century,  Europe  was  still  profoundly 
religious,  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  it  was  becom- 
ing despairingly  indifferent  or  morbidly  superstitious, 
and  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  it  determined  to 
take  the  matter  into  its  own  hands. 

The  ancient  Greeks  had  their  doctrine  of  Nemesis. 
It  was  surely  a  divine  nemesis,  which  brought  out  of  the 
bosom  of  the  Franciscan  order  the  doctrines  that  have 
had  most  force  with  Protestants  as  against  the  Papacy. 
The  "  Everlasting  Gospel  "  of  Joachim  of  Calabria  was 
taken  up  by  the  rigid  party  among  the  Franciscans,  and 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     343 

after  the  relaxation  of  their  rule  by  Gregory  IX.  in  1230, 
and  still  further  by  Innocent  IV.  in  1245,  they  taught 
that  Rome  was  the  Babylon  of  the  Apocalypse,  if  not 
that  the  Pope  was  the  veritable  Anti-Christ.  In  their 
fierce  contest  with  John  XXII.,  they  charged  him  with 
heresy  ;  they  threw  themselves  with  energy  into  the 
conflict  between  that  Pope  and  the  Emperor  Louis  XII.; 
William  of  Ockham  argued  the  Ghibelline  cause  against 
the  Guelph,  defending  the  Empire  against  the  Papacy. 
The  lawyer  Marsilius  of  Padua  found  arguments  against 
the  Papacy  ready  made  for  him  by  the  Franciscans. 
And  in  justice  to  Henry  VIII.,  it  must  be  said  that  for 
two  hundred  years  before  his  time,  the  doctrine  was 
spread  abroad  by  the  rigid  Franciscans  and  others,  that 
the  wealth  of  the  Church  was  its  ruin,  and  the  curtail- 
ment of  it  a  necessity  for  its  reformation. 

I  turn  to  another  branch  of  my  subject :  While  the 
pastoral  work  of  the  Church  was  thus  hindered,  and 
the  character  and  position  of  the  clergy  deteriorated 
through  the  corrupting  influences  which  emanated 
from  the  see  of  Rome,  it  was  impossible,  with  the 
revival  of  commercial,  political  and  intellectual  activity 
among  the  people,  that  there  should  not  appear  evi- 
dences of  ignorant  and  wild  speculation  upon  religious 
subjects,  as  well  as  survivals  of  old  superstitions,  and 
importations  of  various  opinions  and  practices  from 
foreign  countries.  In  the  elevewth  century  we  find 
notices  of  sporadic  heresy,  here  and  there,  which  is 
called  Manicheism,  and  as  such  gifted  with  the  char- 


344     C hristendo77i  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

acteristics  that  appear  in  the  earlier  patristic  accounts 
of  the  heretics  of  that  name.  One  peculiarity,  the  par- 
taking of  a  certain  food  called  consolamentum,  reminds 
us  of  the  Oriental  intoxication  with  hasheesh  or  opium, 
and  points  to  a  connection  with  the  East,  either  through 
the  Paulicians  of  Bulgaria,  or  through  the  Fatimite 
Mohammedans  of  Spain.*     The  real  horror  of  heresy 


♦Toledo  was  conquered  from  the  Moors  by  Alfonso  VI.,  King  of 
Castile,  in  1085.  In  his  army  were  a  number  of  French,  Proven9al  and 
Gascon  knights,  who  were  connected  with  him  by  his  marriage  with 
Constance  of  Burgundy.  The  conquest  of  Toledo  "mingled  the  Moors 
and  the  Christians  in  a  more  intimate  manner.  A  complete  toleration 
was  granted  to  such  of  the  Moors  as  remained  subject  to  the  King  of 
Castile.  *  *  *  This  city,  one  of  the  most  celebrated  universities  of 
the  Arabians,  retained  its  schools,  and  all  its  learned  institutions,  and 
spread  among  the  Christians  the  knowledge  of  Eastern  letters." — 
Sismondi,  Literature  of  Europe,  I.,  p.  98.  Of  the  Paulicians,  Sismondi 
says  (p.  154)  :  "  The  Bulgarians,  who  had  established  a  considerable 
commerce  between  Germany  and  the  Levant,  by  means  of  the  Danube, 
spread  their  opinions  over  the  north  of  Europe,  and  prepared  the  way  for 
the  Hussites  of  Bohemia  ;  while  those  Paulicians  who  had  become  sub- 
jects of  the  Mussulmans,  insinuated  themselves  through  Spain  into  the 
south  of  France  and  Italy."  In  my  copy  of  Robertson  (Vol.  II.  p.  466. 
8vo  ed.)  I  find  this  MS.  note  made  by  myself  so  long  ago  that  I  had 
forgotten  it:  "How  far  is  this  \i,  e.,  the  consolamentum]  connected, 
through  the  Mohammedans  of  Spain,  with  the  Shiites  of  Persia  [the 
Fatimites  were  Sliiites],  and  a  parallel  development  with  that  of  the 
Assassins  [and  the  Old  Man  of  the  Mountain]  a  few  years  later  (A.D. 
logo. — Michelet  I.  p.  206)  see  Pagi  in  Baronius  XV.  232,  for  the  use  of 
drugs  by  the  Paulicians,  at  Tephrica,  anno  871."  Here  it  seems  to  me 
.is  an  interesting  subject  for  investigation.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that 
a  mystery  is  made  about  the  consolamentum,  because  of  the  theories  of 
medicEval  writers  who  knew  more  about  the  tracts  of  St.  Augustine 
against  the  Manicheans,  than  about  the  natural  properties  of  plants. 
Michelet,  in  that  wild  book  of  his,  La  Sorciere,  says  tliat  Toledo  "seems 
to  have  been  the  holy  city  of  Wizards,  who  in  Spain  were  numberless." 
He  also  has  the  following,  speaking  of  the  access  to  witches  for  remedies 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     345 

on  the  part  of  a  believing  people  led  to  some  perse- 
cution at   first,  but  there  were   not  wanting  voices — 
among  them  that  of  St.  Bernard — raised  against  it.     As 
time  went  on,  the  indications  of  these  heretics  become 
more  numerous  along  the  great  lines  of  commercial 
activity,  and  their  spread  may  be  compared  with  that 
of  the  Anarchists  among  ourselves.     It  was  an  incident 
of   a  time    of   commercial    activity,   when    also    the 
Crusades  produced  a  great  deal  of  travel   and  inter- 
course of  people  with  people  ;  and  therefore  it  is  not  to 
be   wondered   at   that   strange   opinions   were   rife  in 
Southern  France,  where   commercial   intercourse  was 
active,  both  with  the  East  and  with  the  Mohammedans 
of  Spain,  and  where,  therefore,  there  would  be  a  cos- 
mopolitan toleration.     I  do  not  need  to  declaim  against 
the  iniquity  of  the  Albigensian  Crusades,  nor  to  palliate 
the  errors  of  the  Albigenses,  who  must   not  be  con- 
founded with  the  Waldenses.     But  I  must,  in  justice  to 


against  pain  :  "  What  we  know  for  surest  with  regard  to  their  medicinal 
practice  is,  that  for  ends  the  most  different,  alike  to  stimulate  and  to 
soothe,  ihey  made  use  of  one  large  family  of  doubtful  and  very  dangerous 
plants,  called,  by  reason  of  the  services  they  rendered.  The  Comforters  or 
Solanese,"  adding  in  a  foot-note:  "  Man's  ingratitude  is  painful  to  see. 
A  thousand  other  plants  have  come  into  use;  a  hundred  exotic  vegetables 
have  become  the  fashion.  But  the  good  once  done  by  these  poor  Comforters 
is  clean  forgotten  i  *  *  *  The  Asclepias  acida,  Sarcostemma,  or  flesh- 
plant  [hasheesh]  which  for  five  thousand  years  was  *  *  *  eaten 
gladly  by  five  hundred  millions  men — this  plant,  in  the  Middle  Ages 
called  the  Poison-queller  {vince  venenttm),  meets  with  not  one  word  of 
historical  comment  in  our  books  of  botany.  Perhaps  two  thousand  years 
hence,  they  will  forget  the  wheat." — La  Sorciere,  p.  I2i.  With  all  his 
fancifulness  one  can  learn  something  from  Michelet. 


34^     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

the  Church  at  large,  point  out  how  the  wholesale  perse- 
cution of  heretics  at  this  period  was  connected  with  the 
condition  of  the  Church,  as  I  have  stated  it,  brought 
about  by  the  Papal  supremacy.  That  Innocent  III.  is 
responsible  for  the  Albigensian  Crusades  no  one  will 
deny.  But  it  is  a  frequent  and  sophistical  assertion  of 
the  Papal  advocates,  that  the  burning  of  heretics  was 
an  act  of  the  State  and  not  of  the  Church.  The  state- 
ment is  technically  true,  but  practically  false.  The 
establishment  of  the  Inquisition  in  1233  made  it  the 
tribunal  to  judge  of  heresy,  and  the  charge  of  favoring 
heresy,  easily  made  against  the  ruler  who  refused  to 
inflict  the  extreme  penalty  upon  condemned  heretics, 
exposed  him  to  the  fate  of  Count  Raymond  of  Toulouse. 
In  the  quarrel  between  Gregory  IX.  and  Frederick  II. 
this  charge  of  favoring  heresy  was  made  on  both  sides. 
Frederick  taunted  Gregory  IX.  with  being  a  fautor  of 
heretics,  because  they  were  numerous  in  Milan,  which 
adhered  to  Gregory ;  and  to  repel  the  charge  the 
Milanese,  as  an  old  chronicler  says,  "began  to  burn 
heretics"  in  the  year  1233*  Gregory  retaliated  by 
making  the  same  accusation  against  Frederick,  who 
felt  himself  thereupon  obliged  to  make  laws  against  the 
sectaries.      And   so,  between  the  Inquisition  and  the 


*  Robertson,  III.,  p.  560.  In  a  note  on  the  next  page  R.  says:  "Matthew 
Paris  mentions  some  burnings  at  Milan  in  1240,  as  caused  '  rather  by  fear 
of  punishment  than  by  love  of  virtue,'  as  the  Pope  was  then  the  only 
hope  of  the  Milanese."  In  other  words  the  Milanese  had  no  love  for  the 
business. 


From  Consianhne  to  the  Reformation.     347 

Papal  pressure  upon  "the  secular  arm,"  the  disgrace 
of  persecution  for  religion,  whatever  share  the  clergy 
in  general  may  have  taken  in  it,  lies  principally  at  the 
door  of  the  Papacy. 

Here  some  remarks  are  pertinent  concerning  certain 
strange  phenomena  of  the  later  Middle  Ages.  As  the 
popular  feeling  rose  against  the  Papal  usurpations,  it 
seemed  more  and  more  necessary  to  cow  it  and  keep 
it  down.  The  extension  of  the  definition  of  heresy  to 
cover  every  crude  opinion  of  the  untheological  laity 
would  condemn  as  a  heretic  many  a  sincere  and  earnest 
Christian  of  the  present  day,  and  there  was  the  like 
danger  in  the  Middle  Ages.  And  when  the  heretic 
was  counted  worthy  of  death,  the  execution  of  silly  and 
obstinate  people  for  their  crude  opinions  would  natu- 
rally provoke  the  sympathy  of  all  who  were  indignant 
at  the  condition  of  the  Church,  and  increase  the  num- 
ber of  those  who  would  think  their  errors  indifferent, 
their  fanaticism  heroic,  and  their  fate  unjust.  The 
persecution  of  heretics,  therefore,  did  not  reduce  the 
number  of  their  sympathizers  ;  and  so  it  seemed  good 
to  the  powers  that  then  were,  to  terrorize  the  popular 
mind  by  raking  up  from  the  records  of  the  past  all  the 
horrors  attributed  to  the  Gnostics  and  Manicheans  of 
the  first  ages  of  Christianity,  and  imputing  them  to  the 
sectaries  of  the  thirteenth  century.  Undoubtedly  the 
type  of  opinion  represented  by  the  term  Albigenses 
was  Manichean  in  principle  ;  and  this  being  so,  the 
theologian  would  feel  justified  in  describing  the  Mani- 


34^    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

chean  heretic  of  his  own  day  by  what  he  learned  from 
his  books  of  the  Manicheans  of  the  fourth  century. 
But  what  I  want  to  point  out  now  is,  that  after  the 
Albigensian  crusades  these  stories  seem  to  have  lost 
their  terror,  and  it  was  necessary  to  improve  upon 
them.  Hence  we  find  that  when  Gregory  IX.  in  1232 
commissioned  Conrad  of  Marburg  to  proceed  as  in- 
quisitor against  the  Stedingers,  stories  of  dealing  with 
the  devil  and  the  witches'  sabbath  begin  to  make  their 
appearance.  These  stories,  with  the  necessary  varia- 
tions, are  made  good  use  of  by  Philip  the  Fair  in 
proceeding  against  the  Knights  Templars,  when  he 
determines  to  suppress  that  order.  Finally,  under 
John  XXII.,  the  second  of  the  Avignon  Popes,  there 
are  tales  of  a  sudden  outburst  of  witchcraft  and  malig- 
nant magic  and  diabolical  incantations  taking  the 
place  of  the  old  accusations  of  heretical  pravity  — 
notions  which  held  their  own  until  they  had  succeeded 
in  putting  an  ineffaceable  stain  upon  Puritan  New 
England.  The  fact  to  notice,  however,  is  that  at  the 
time  we  are  speaking  of,  these  extreme  and  fanatical 
beliefs  in  heretical  depravity  and  diabolical  dealings 
appear  where  the  Papacy  is  most  active  and  the  Inqui- 
sition most  powerful. 

But  we  must  not  suppose  that  even  under  these  con- 
ditions, all  religious  zeal  among  the  laity  was  drawn  ofY 
from  the  Church  into  the  heretical  sects.  If,  as  I  have 
endeavored  to  show,  the  Church  in  earlier  ages  was 
faithful    to   its   mission,  it  was    not  possible  that  the 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reforntatwn.     349 

Christian  tradition  should  not  hold  its  own,  and  the 
desire  for  a  Christian  life  should  not  survive  among  the 
people,  even  though  their  institutions  were  thus  thrown 
into  disorder.     The  traditions  of  the  home  and  the  fire- 
side have  as  much  to  do  with  religion  as  the  public 
teaching  of  the  Church.     Prof.  Stokes,  in  his  very  inter- 
esting volume  just  published  on  Ireland  and  the  Celtic 
Church,  remarks  upon  the  firm  hold  which  tradition  has 
upon  the  uneducated  mind — and  we  take  it  for  granted 
that  people  who  in  the  Middle  Ages  could  not  read  Latin 
were  uneducated  ;  at  least  they  had  not  newspapers  to 
draw  them  off  from  home  and  local  instruction.     "  The 
more  you  investigate,"  he  says,  "  the  more  you  will  be 
struck  with  the  firm,  tenacious  grasp  tradition,  tradi- 
tional scenes,  traditional  history,  traditional  games  and 
celebrations  take  of  the  popular  mind.    *    *     *    Noth- 
ing destroys   tradition   so   utterly  and  so  rapidly  as 
education.    Give  a  peasant  a  penny  newspaper  and  teach 
him  to  use  it,  get  him  to  take  an  interest  in  the  politics 
of  Europe,  and  the  great  political  questions  which  may 
be  exciting  his  own  country,  and  you  deprive  him  of  the 
keen  interest  he  once  took  in  the  stories  handed  down 
from  generation  to  generation,  and  told  round  the  fire- 
side on  the  winter  evenings,  as  the  rain  and  the  storm 
raged    without."  *     Among    ourselves,    the  •  common 
people  in  the  village  and  the  country  are  conservative 
by  the  operation  of  this  principle  ;  the  innovation  and 

*  Ireland  and  the  Celtic  Church,  p.  57, 


350     Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

the  corruption  spread  in  the  lines  of  commerce  and  of 
political  activity,  and,  in  an  aristocratic  state  of  society 
among  the  governing  classes,  before  they  affect  "the 
people."  In  the  Middle  Ages  it  was  much  more  so,  and 
among  persons  of  higher  intellectual  status  than  nowa- 
days, when  the  newspaper  circulates  everywhere.  I  do 
not  assert  that  the  Middle  Ages  were  better  than,  or  as 
good  as  our  own  for  this  reason  ;  but  I  do  say  that  this 
must  be  taken  into  the  account  in  estimating  the  prog- 
ress of  the  corruption  which  is  so  freely  charged  upon 
the  whole  Church  in  the  period  preceding  the  Refor- 
mation. Dr.  Neale,  the  eminent  Liturgical  scholar, 
argues  that  the  Liturgies  of  outlying  and  secluded  dis- 
tricts are  more  primitive  in  their  structure  than  those  of 
the  great  Patriarchates  because  of  the  conservatism  of 
such  districts.  The  principle  must  be  applied,  in  all 
justice,  to  the  problem  of  the  condition  of  Christian 
belief  among  the  laity  at  this  period — which  is  the  true 
test  of  the  faithfulness  of  the  Church.  Again,  allowance 
must  be  made  for  the  fact  that  language  was  in  a  tran- 
sition state,  and  that  it  was  not  easy  for  persons  trained 
as  theologians  to  think  and  dispute  in  Latin  to  preach 
in  the  vernacular  ;  and  therefore  that  public  preaching 
became  less  frequent — as  many  persons  wish  it  was  at 
the  present  day.  At  the  same  time,  the  fact  that  the 
people  could  not  read  Latin  kept,  to  some  extent  at 
least,  hurtful  innovations  from  them.  They  could  un- 
derstand sculptures  or  paintings,  like  those  on  St. 
Mark's,  Venice,  or  Chartres  Cathedral,  when  they  could 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.    351 

not,  and  did  not  want  to,  understand  the  last  subtilty 
of  the  scholastic  philosophy,  or  the  last  argument  for 
the  plenary  authority  of  the  Pope.  And  therefore  it  is 
not  to  be  doubted  that  at  this  time  there  were  multitudes 
of  sincere  and  earnest  souls,  seekers  after  God,  and  be- 
lievers in  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  who  were  faithful  to 
the  Church,  and  found  in  it  the  nurture  of  their  spiritual 
life  ;  and  it  is  pathetic  to  see  how  the  earnestness  and 
faith  of  some  of  them  were  repressed,  when  they  sought 
for  the  approval  of  those  high  in  authority,  or  how  their 
influence  for  good,  when  they  became  active  workers, 
was  perverted,  either  by  the  unjust  ban  of  the  Papacy, 
or  its  interested  and  selfish  favor.  The  Waldenses  are 
an  example  of  the  one,  the  Franciscans  and  Dominicans 
of  the  other.  The  Waldenses  are  sometimes  asserted 
to  be  "survivals"  of  a  time  when  the  Church  was  Pres- 
byterian— a  condition  which  can  be  found  nowhere  in 
all  history  before  John  Calvin.*  As  a  matter  of  fact  the 
Waldenses  had  no  desire  to  break  with  the  Church  ; 
what  they  did  desire  was  to  have  the  Scriptures  in  the 
new  language  which  had  been  gradually  forming  itself 
among  the  people,  in  which  there  was  as  yet  no  litera- 
ture. In  their  simplicity  they  laid  their  books  and 
teachings  before  Pope  Alexander  III.,  and  had  he  dealt 

*  Hooker's  Challenge  to  the  Puritans  has  never  been  met  :  "  We  re- 
quire you  to  find  out  but  one  Church  upon  the  face  of  the  whole  earth, 
that  hath  been  ordered  by  your  discipline,  or  hath  not  been  ordered  by 
ours,  that  is  to  say  by  Episcopal  regiment,  sithence  the  time  that  the 
blessed  Apostles  were  here  conversant." — Preface  to  Eccl.  Polity,  Ch. 
IK,  p.  I. 


352    Christendo^n  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

with  them  as  Innocent  III.  did  later  with  the  Francis- 
cans, they  would  not  have  formed  a  sect  of  their  own. 
But  his  cardinals  laughed  at  them  for  their  want  of 
scholastic  learning  ;  and  in  an  evil  hour  Lucius  III. 
(A.D.  1 184)  excommunicated  "those  who  falsely  styled 
themselves  Jnimiliati  or  poor  men  of  Lyons."  *  They 
then  went  to  the  other  extreme  in  opposing,  not  only 
the  existing  system,  but  the  truth  of  the  visible  Church; 
and  they  suffered  severely  at  the  hands  of  the  Inqui- 
sition. 

It  is  the  fact  that  all  through  mediaeval  Europe,  while 
the  evil  influence  of  the  Papacy  was  making  itself  felt  in 
the  high  places  of  Church  and  State,  and  slowly  filtering 
down,  the  tradition  of  the  home  and  the  fireside  was 
doing  its  work  for  Christian  faith  and  feeling  ;  and  it 
was  helped  by  the  traditional  system  of  the  Liturgy  and 
the  Christian  year.  Is  it  not  significant  that  English 
Literature  begins  with  Piers  Plowman's  Vision  ;  and 
that  the  "Imitation  of  Christ"  appeared  at  the  very 
worst  period  in  the  history  of  the  Church  .-'  Michelet 
says  that  there  are  two  thousand  editions  of  this  book 
in  Latin,  a  thousand  in  French, sixty  French  translations, 
thirty  translations  into  Italian,  besides  others  of  which 
he  makes  no  mention.  Surely  this  fact  of  itself  proves 
that  in  the  age  preceding  the  Reformation,  religion  was 
not  to  be  found  only  among  the  sectaries  ;  it  is  not  true 
that  the  Church  was  utterly  corrupt.f 

*  Robertson,  III.,  p.  201. 

f  There  is  another  branch  of  this  argument  which  I  have  not  time  or 
space  to  develop.     It  is  that  as  llie  sectaries  departed  from  the  traditional 


Front  Constantiiie  to  the  Re/ormatzon.     353 

What,  then,  was  the  evil  of  these  times  ?  It  was  that 
the  Hildebrandine  system,  as  administered  in  the  thir- 
teenth, fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  set  fidelity  to 
the  Papacy  above  true  Christian  morality.  So  far  as 
this  affected  the  Church,  so  far  it  corrupted  it  ;  when 
the  Church  was  able  to  resist  it,  religion  held  its  own. 
And  therefore,  for  more  than  a  century  before  Luther, 
the  cry  was  constantly  being  repeated  for  a  Reformation. 
The  reforming  Councils  of  Pisa,  Constance  and  Basle 
made  honest  efforts  to  reform  the  Church  ;  but  they 
failed  because  they  could  not  bind  the  Pope,  and  they 
were  not  prepared  to  renounce  allegiance  to  him.  Nor 
were  they  willing  to  call  the  people  to  their  aid.  They 
were  fearful  of  revolution  instead  of  reformation. 

I  must,  I  find,  compress  what  more  I  have  to  say  into 
the  fewest  possible  sentences.  A  few  dates  in  the  sub- 
sequent history  of  the  Papacy  are  all  that  are  necessary 
for  this  lecture  ;  the  details  you  can  read  in  Robertson. 
On  St.  Martin's  Day,  Nov.  11,  1305,  Clement  V.  was 
crowned  at  Lyons  ;  he  remained  in  France  for  five  years, 
and  then  fixed  his  residence  at  Avignon.  For  seventy 
years  the  Papacy  was  virtually  subject  to  France.  Dur- 
ing this  period  the  House  of  Valois  came  to  the  throne  ; 
the  feudal  nobles,  who  had  been  curtailed  of  their  priv- 
ileges in  the  previous  reigns,  reasserted  themselves ; 
and  France  was  made  to  suffer  in  the  wars  with  Edward 

Christianity  of  the  Church — I  mean  from  that  which  had  descended  from 
ancient  times  in  the  National  Churches — they  became  wild  and  fanatical 
and  corrupt  :  e.  g.,  the  Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit  and  the  Anabaptists, 


354      Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

III.  of  England.  January  1 5,  1 377,  Gregory  XI.  restored 
the  Papacy  to  Rome,  where  Rienzi  had  lately  "  strutted 
his  brief  hour  upon  the  stage."  But  the  Great  Schism 
of  40  years  immediately  followed  (A.D.  1377-1417),  in 
which  there  was  a  line  of  Rome,  a  line  of  Avignon,  and 
part  of  the  time  a  line  of  the  Council  of  Pisa. 

In  1375,  two  years  before  Gregory  XI.  returned  to 
Rome,  the  Republic  of  Florence,  exasperated  at  the  bad 
faith  of  the  Papal  legate  who  governed  in  Italy,  sent  its 
army  into  the  Papal  States,  under  a  banner  inscribed 
with  the  one  word,  "Libertas,"  and  in  ten  days,  eighty 
cities  were  restored  their  republican  constitutions.  In 
the  same  year  in  which  Gregory  returned,  he  sent  a  bull 
to  England,  requiring  the  authorities  to  investigate  the 
errors  attributed  to  John  WycHff.  Put  these  two  appar- 
ently unconnected  facts  together,  and  study  their 
meaning.  They  mean  among  other  things  this,  that  in 
Italy  and  in  England  alike,  the  people  have  discovered 
the  true  character  of  the  Papacy.  For  the  offence  of 
Wycliff  was  not  that  he  held  such  and  such  opinions — 
others  had  held  and  taught  with  impunity  much  the 
same  as  he  did — but  these  others  had  taught  them  in 
the  schools  and  in  Latin,  while  John  Wycliff  was  teach- 
ing them  in  English  and  to  the  people.  But  they  mean 
more  than  this.  They  mean  that  Europe  was  now 
conscious  that  it  was  passing  through  a  revolution 
which  should  bring  the  Middle  Ages  to  an  end,  and 
introduce  what  we  call  modern  times.  And  by  the 
operations  of  the  Papacy  the  Church  had  been  enfeebled, 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     355 

so  that  it  was  not  able  to  guide  the  Ship  of  State  through 
that  revolution.  Take  a  single  illustration.  In  the 
feudal  times,  the  life  of  a  noble  was  one  of  laborious  in- 
dustry. He  was  not  only  an  officer  of  the  army,  but 
the  governor  of  a  district,  and  a  judge  of  the  people. 
While  the  right  of  private  war  existed,  he  was  bound  to 
be  on  the  alert  to  avenge  his  injuries,  or  to  defend  his 
possessions  and  his  people.  When  there  was  public  or 
national  war,  he  was  bound  to  furnish  his  contingent  to 
the  army,  and  to  lead  it  himself.  As  the  nation  gained 
consistency,  and  the  cities  became  more  important,  the 
changes  in  the  political  condition  deprived  the  nobility 
one  by  one  of  these  duties  and  responsibilities.  As  soon 
as  it  was  found  that  infantry  could  meet  cavalry,  and 
when  gunpowder  rendered  armor  useless,  the  mercenary 
soldier,  and  later  the  standing  army  deprived  the  noble 
of  his  military  consequence.  The  extension  of  the  royal 
law  over  the  kingdom,  and  the  practice  of  the  lawyers 
in  the  king's  courts  put  an  end  to  the  baronial  admin- 
istration of  justice  ;  and  the  government  of  cities  and 
towns  by  the  king's  officers,  or  by  their  own  magistrates, 
restricted  his  functions  as  governor  and  lord  of  his  dis- 
trict. The  noble,  under  these  changed  conditions, 
found  his  life  useless,  and  time  hung  heavy  on  his  hands. 
He  became  an  absentee  landlord,  spending  his  time 
amid  the  revels  of  the  court,  and  compelled  to  oppress 
his  vassals  and  his  tenants  for  the  means  to  support  his 
extravagance.  "When  the  pride  of  wealth  and  pomp," 
says  Prof.  Stubbs,  "  took  the  place  of  political  aspira- 


356    Christendom  Ecclesiastical  and  Political 

tions,  personal  indulgence,  domestic  tyranny,  obsequi- 
ous servility  followed  as  unmitigated  and  deeply-rooted 
evils."  Then,  when  a  general  calamity,  like  the  Black 
Death,  swept  over  the  country,  the  evils  of  a  transition 
period  became  exaggerated,  and  the  luxury  and  privi- 
leges of  the  nobility  produced,  as  they  had  a  right  to 
do,  discontent  among  the  suffering  and  the  destitute, 
that  is  to  say  the  serf  and  the  laborer.  The  privileges 
and  luxury  had  been  the  pay  of  work  done  ;  now  the 
work  was  not  done  ;  but  the  privileges  were  clung  to 
tenaciously,  and  the  luxury  increased  and  became 
vicious.  I  cannot  go  more  into  this,  but  this  one  illus- 
tration may  show  how  the  old  order  was  passing  away, 
and  the  new  was  not  yet  formulated.  Now  when,  under 
these  conditions,  the  evils  in  the  Church,  made  worse 
by  the  Avignon  Papacy  and  the  Great  Schism,  came 
into  debate,  it  was  felt  that  the  state  of  Europe,  both 
political  and  ecclesiastical,  was  so  bad  that  any  at- 
tempt at  readjustment  would  bring  down  the  whole 
fabric  of  government,  kingly  as  well  as  papal.  That 
was  the  meaning  of  the  attempt  to  silence  Wycliff. 
England,  fortunately,  was  in  a  better  condition  than 
other  countries.  Her  constitution  was  developing  in  an 
orderly  manner,  and  there  was  no  real  break  between 
the  old  order  and  the  new.  And  therefore,  with  all  the 
efforts  of  the  Papacy,  and  the  Papal  portion  of  the 
Church  of  England,  Wycliff 's  University  of  Oxford  and 
the  people  stood  by  him,  and  he  died  quietly  in  his  bed. 
On  the  continent  it  was  different.     And  therefore  when 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     357 

the  University  of  Paris  took  in  hand  the  reform  of  the 
Church,  it  was  afraid  of  the  popular  movement,  and 
John  Huss  was  burned  at  the  Council  of  Constance,  to 
the  eternal  infamy  of  wise  and  good  men  like  Gerson, 
ostensibly  for  heresy,  but  really  because  he  had  made 
the  appeal  to  the  people,  which  the  authorities  feared 
because  they  were,  as  I  said,  afraid  of  revolution.  Huss 
was  burned  for  political  reasons,  quite  as  much  as  for 
imputed  heresy  ;  and  terribly  was  he  avenged  in  the 
Hussite  wars.  To  the  honor  of  England  let  it  be  said 
that  if  Robert  Hallam,  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  had  lived  to 
the  end  of  the  Council  of  Constance,  Huss  would  not 
have  suffered. 

I  shall  not  have  time  during  the  present  academic 
year  to  prepare  another  lecture  for  this  course,  although 
the  terms  of  the  foundation  permit  seven  ;  and  therefore 
I  must  leave  the  subject  in  this  incomplete  state.  The 
Reforming  Councils  of  Pisa,  Constance  and  Basle,  show 
the  sincere  desire  of  the  national  Churches  to  bring 
back  the  Church  Catholic  to  a  healthy  condition.  At 
Constance,  particularly,  the  fact  I  have  insisted  upon 
that  the  National  Churches  must  be  taken  into  the  ac- 
count in  estimating  the  good  and  evil  of  the  times  is 
shown  by  the  method  of  voting — by  nations.  That 
these  councils  accomplished  nothing  very  great  was 
because  they  could  not  bind  the  Popes.  The  Hilde- 
brandine  theory  made  the  Pope  superior  to  a  council, 
and  the  inferior  could  not  bind  the  superior.  After  the 
Council  of  Basle,  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  of  Charles 


35^     CJiristendoni  P. cclesiastical  and  Political 

VII.  did  something  for  the  Gallican  Liberties  ;  but  the 
old  evils  remained,  wherever  the  Papal  influence  could 
be  exerted.  The  Popes  themselves  descended  to  the 
level  of  Italian  intriguers,  of  whom  Alexander  VI.  was 
the  worst.  In  the  meantime,  Constantinople  was  taken 
by  the  Turks,  and  fugitives  from  that  city  brought  the 
Greek  learning  into  the  West.  The  printing-press  was 
invented,  and  books  became  accessible  to  the  multitude, 
and  libraries  numerous  for  scholars.  The  discovery  of 
America  changed  the  commercial  condition  of  the 
world,  and  compelled  the  new  adjustments  which 
brought  the  Middle  Ages  to  an  end.  Just  at  this  time, 
Leo  X.  sent  his  preachers  of  indulgences  into  Germany, 
which  had  been  groaning  under  her  "hundred  griev- 
ances," and  the  righteous  indignation  of  Martin  Luther 
broke  out  against  them,  and  we  know  the  rest.  Into 
that  it  has  not  been  my  intention  to  enter.  I  hope  I 
have  shown  that  there  was  a  living  Church,  doing  its 
work  for  Christ,  even  in  the  unreformed  ages. 

One  word  in  conclusion.  If  my  interpretation  of  the 
history  I  have  endeavored  to  review  is  correct,  and  I 
believe  it  is,  we  need  no  vindication  of  our  position,  as 
members  of  the  historic  Church,  both  Catholic  and 
Reformed,  other  than  the  intelligent  knowledge  of  its 
history.  The  English  Reformation  avoided  the  evils 
of  the  Continental  uprooting.  In  breaking  finally  with 
the  Papacy,  while  holding  to  the  unchangeable  order 
of  the  Ministry  of  Apostolic  Succession,  it  removed  the 
great  cause  of  the  evils  which  had  afflicted  tlic  Church, 


From  Constantine  to  the  Reformation.     359 

and  gave  opportunity  for  that  recurrence  to  and  de- 
velopment of  true  Church  principles,  which,  please 
God,  is  to  be  more  complete  as  time  goes  on.  At  the 
same  time,  in  the  English  Reformation  there  are  the 
seeds  of  other  difficulties.  The  relation  of  Church  and 
State  is  too  much  of  a  piece  with  that  under  Constan- 
tine. Here,  in  the  United  States,  we  are,  by  Divine 
Providence  free  from  State  politics  as  well  as  Papal 
tyranny.  In  this  respect,  notwithstanding  our  diffi- 
culties, our  reformation  is  one  step  in  advance  of  the 
English,  and  our  position  with  reference  to  the  future 
is  so  much  better.  Hitherto  we  have  been  a  feeble 
and  timid  folk,  afraid  to  assert  our  privileges  and 
prerogative  as  the  Church  in  the  United  States  of 
America.  But,  day  by  day,  as  the  fact  of  our  refor- 
mation works  in  us,  and  we  obtain  clearer  views  of  our 
vocation,  and  the  power  of  divine  grace  granted  us  in 
the  Apostolic  Ministry,  and  the  Sacraments  of  the 
Gospel — as  we  feel  our  freedom  in  Christ — as  we  feel 
that  we  are  the  Church  and  not  a  sect — the  Catholic 
faith  and  spirit  revive  in  us,  and  we  go  forth,  following 
Him,  who  has  on  His  vesture,  and  His  thigh,  a  Name 
written,  KiNG  OF  KINGS  AND  Lord  of  lords,  con- 
quering and  to  conquer. 


THE   end. 


